Balzac - Colonel Chabert

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Colonel Chabert.

Honoré de Balzac.

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o n t e n t s

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Honore de Balzac . Colonel Chabert.

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About the author

Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799- August 18, 1850), was a French nov-

elist.

He was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France in the rue

de l’Armée Italienne.

He would become one of the creators of Realism in litera-

ture, though his work is still largely in the tradition of French

Literary Romanticism. His Human Comedy (La Comédie

humaine ) spanned more than 90 novels and short stories in an

attempt to comprehend and depict the realities of life in mod-

ern bourgeois France.

Balzac’s work habits are legendarily intimidating - he wrote

for up to 15 hours a day, fuelled by innumerable cups of

black coffee. Because of this extraordinarily large output, many

of the novels display minor imperfections and in some cases

outright careless writing.

Several, however, are widely recognized to be masterpieces:

La peau de chagrin

Cousine Bette

Le père Goriot

Eugènie Grandet

Les illusions perdues

Balzac’s realistic prose and his strength as an encyclopedic

recorder of his age outshine any small detracting qualities of his style to make him a Dickensian bastion of French litera-

ture.

Balzac is buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris,

France. He is commemorated by a monumental statue which

Auguste Rodin was commissioned to sculpt.









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Contents

This edition of Colonel Chabert is not di-

vided into sections or chapters.









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http://collegebookshelf.net 1

“HULLO! There is that old Box-coat again!”

This exclamation was made by a lawyer’s clerk of the class

called in French offices a gutter-jumper—a messenger in

fact—who at this moment was eating a piece of dry bread

with a hearty appetite. He pulled off a morsel of crumb to

make into a bullet, and fired it gleefully through the openpane of the window against which he was leaning. The pellet,

well aimed, rebounded almost as high as the window, after

hitting the hat of a stranger who was crossing the courtyard

of a house in the Rue Vivienne, where dwelt Maitre Derville,

attorney-at-law.

“Come, Simonnin, don’t play tricks on people, or I will

turn you out of doors. However poor a client may be, he is

still a man, hang it all!” said the head clerk, pausing in theaddition of a bill of costs.

The lawyer’s messenger is commonly, as was Simonnin, a

lad of thirteen or fourteen, who, in every office, is under the

special jurisdiction of the managing clerk, whose errands and

Colonel Chabert.

Translated by Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell

Dedication.

To Madame la Comtesse Ida de Bocarme nee du Chasteler.

NOTICE

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billets-doux keep him employed on his way to carry writs to

the bailiffs and petitions to the Courts. He is akin to the

street boy in his habits, and to the pettifogger by fate. The

boy is almost always ruthless, unbroken, unmanageable, a ribald

rhymester, impudent, greedy, and idle. And yet, almost all

these clerklings have an old mother lodging on some fifthfloor with whom they share their pittance of thirty or forty

francs a month.

“If he is a man, why do you call him old Box-coat?” asked

Simonnin, with the air of a schoolboy who has caught out his

master.

And he went on eating his bread and cheese, leaning his

shoulder against the window jamb; for he rested standing like

a cab-horse, one of his legs raised and propped against theother, on the toe of his shoe.

“What trick can we play that cove?” said the third clerk,

whose name was Godeschal, in a low voice, pausing in the

middle of a discourse he was extemporizing in an appeal en-

grossed by the fourth clerk, of which copies were being made

by two neophytes from the provinces.

Then he went on improvising:

“But, in his noble and beneficent wisdom, his Majesty, Louisthe Eighteenth—(write it at full length, heh! Desroches the

learned— you, as you engross it!)—when he resumed the reins of

Government, understood —(what did that old nincompoop ever

understand?)—the high mission to which he had been called by

Divine Providence! —(a note of admiration and six stops. They

are pious enough at the Courts to let us put six)—and his first

thought, as is proved by the date of the order hereinafter designated,

was to repair the misfortunes caused by the terrible and sad disas-

ters of the revolutionary times, by restoring to his numerous and

faithful adherents—(‘numerous’ is flattering, and ought toplease the Bench)—all their unsold estates, whether within our

realm, or in conquered or acquired territory, or in the endowments

of public institutions, for we are, and proclaim ourselves compe-

tent to declare, that this is the spirit and meaning of the famous,

truly loyal order given in—Stop,” said Godeschal to the three

copying clerks, “that rascally sentence brings me to the end of

my page.—Well,” he went on, wetting the back fold of the

sheet with his tongue, so as to be able to fold back the page of thick stamped paper, “well, if you want to play him a trick,

tell him that the master can only see his clients between two

and three in the morning; we shall see if he comes, the old

ruffian!”

And Godeschal took up the sentence he was dictating—

” given in—Are you ready?”

“Yes,” cried the three writers.

It all went all together, the appeal, the gossip, and theconspiracy.

“Given in—Here, Daddy Boucard, what is the date of the

order? We must dot our i ’s and cross our t ’s, by Jingo! it helps

to fill the pages.”









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“By Jingo!” repeated one of the copying clerks before

Boucard, the head clerk, could reply.

“What! have you written by Jingo?” cried Godeschal, look-

ing at one of the novices, with an expression at once stern and

humorous.

“Why, yes,” said Desroches, the fourth clerk, leaning acrosshis neighbor’s copy, “he has written, ‘We must dot our i’s’ and

spelt it by Gingo!”

All the clerks shouted with laughter.

“Why! Monsieur Hure, you take ‘By Jingo’ for a law term,

and you say you come from Mortagne!” exclaimed Simonnin.

“Scratch it cleanly out,” said the head clerk. “If the judge,

whose business it is to tax the bill, were to see such things, he

would say you were laughing at the whole boiling. You wouldhear of it from the chief! Come, no more of this nonsense,

Monsieur Hure! A Norman ought not to write out an appeal

without thought. It is the ‘Shoulder arms!’ of the law.”

“Given in—in?” asked Godeschal.—”Tell me when,

Boucard.”

“June 1814,” replied the head clerk, without looking up

from his work.

A knock at the office door interrupted the circumlocu-tions of the prolix document. Five clerks with rows of hungry

teeth, bright, mocking eyes, and curly heads, lifted their noses

towards the door, after crying all together in a singing tone,

“Come in!”

Boucard kept his face buried in a pile of papers—broutilles

(odds and ends) in French law jargon—and went on drawing

out the bill of costs on which he was busy.

The office was a large room furnished with the traditional

stool which is to be seen in all these dens of law-quibbling.

The stove-pipe crossed the room diagonally to the chimney of a bricked-up fireplace; on the marble chimney-piece were

several chunks of bread, triangles of Brie cheese, pork cutlets,

glasses, bottles, and the head clerk’s cup of chocolate. The

smell of these dainties blended so completely with that of the

immoderately overheated stove and the odor peculiar to of-

fices and old papers, that the trail of a fox would not have

been perceptible. The floor was covered with mud and snow,

brought in by the clerks. Near the window stood the desk with a revolving lid, where the head clerk worked, and against

the back of it was the second clerk’s table. The second clerk

was at this moment in Court. It was between eight and nine

in the morning.

The only decoration of the office consisted in huge yellow

posters, announcing seizures of real estate, sales, settlements

under trust, final or interim judgments,—all the glory of a

lawyer’s office. Behind the head clerk was an enormous room,of which each division was crammed with bundles of papers

with an infinite number of tickets hanging from them at the

ends of red tape, which give a peculiar physiognomy to law

papers. The lower rows were filled with cardboard boxes, yel-









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low with use, on which might be read the names of the more

important clients whose cases were juicily stewing at this

present time. The dirty window-panes admitted but little

daylight. Indeed, there are very few offices in Paris where it is

possible to write without lamplight before ten in the morn-

ing in the month of February, for they are all left to very natural neglect; every one comes and no one stays; no one has

any personal interest in a scene of mere routine —neither the

attorney, nor the counsel, nor the clerks, trouble themselves

about the appearance of a place which, to the youths, is a

schoolroom; to the clients, a passage; to the chief, a labora-

tory. The greasy furniture is handed down to successive own-

ers with such scrupulous care, that in some offices may still

be seen boxes of remainders, machines for twisting parchmentgut, and bags left by the prosecuting parties of the Chatelet

(abbreviated to Chlet )—a Court which, under the old order

of things, represented the present Court of First Instance (or

County Court).

So in this dark office, thick with dust, there was, as in all

its fellows, something repulsive to the clients—something

which made it one of the most hideous monstrosities of Paris.

Nay, were it not for the mouldy sacristies where prayers are weighed out and paid for like groceries, and for the old-clothes

shops, where flutter the rags that blight all the illusions of life

by showing us the last end of all our festivities—an attorney’s

office would be, of all social marts, the most loathsome. But

we might say the same of the gambling-hell, of the Law Court,

of the lottery office, of the brothel.

But why? In these places, perhaps, the drama being played

in a man’s soul makes him indifferent to accessories, which

would also account for the single-mindedness of great think-

ers and men of great ambitions.“Where is my penknife?”

“I am eating my breakfast.”

“You go and be hanged! here is a blot on the copy.”

“Silence, gentlemen!”

These various exclamations were uttered simultaneously

at the moment when the old client shut the door with the

sort of humility which disfigures the movements of a man

down on his luck. The stranger tried to smile, but the musclesof his face relaxed as he vainly looked for some symptoms of

amenity on the inexorably indifferent faces of the six clerks.

Accustomed, no doubt, to gauge men, he very politely ad-

dressed the gutter-jumper, hoping to get a civil answer from

this boy of all work.

“Monsieur, is your master at home?”

The pert messenger made no reply, but patted his ear with

the fingers of his left hand, as much as to say, “I am deaf.”“What do you want, sir?” asked Godeschal, swallowing as

he spoke a mouthful of bread big enough to charge a four-

pounder, flourishing his knife and crossing his legs, throwing

up one foot in the air to the level of his eyes.









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“This is the fifth time I have called,” replied the victim. “I

wish to speak to M. Derville.”

“On business?”

“Yes, but I can explain it to no one but—”

“M. Derville is in bed; if you wish to consult him on some

difficulty, he does no serious work till midnight. But if you will lay the case before us, we could help you just as well as he

can to——”

The stranger was unmoved; he looked timidly about him,

like a dog who has got into a strange kitchen and expects a

kick. By grace of their profession, lawyers’ clerks have no fear

of thieves; they did not suspect the owner of the box-coat,

and left him to study the place, where he looked in vain for a

chair to sit on, for he was evidently tired. Attorneys, on prin-ciple, do not have many chairs in their offices. The inferior

client, being kept waiting on his feet, goes away grumbling,

but then he does not waste time, which, as an old lawyer once

said, is not allowed for when the bill is taxed.

“Monsieur,” said the old man, “as I have already told you,

I cannot explain my business to any one but M. Derville. I

will wait till he is up.”

Boucard had finished his bill. He smelt the fragrance of his chocolate, rose from his cane armchair, went to the chim-

ney-piece, looked the old man from head to foot, stared at his

coat, and made an indescribable grimace. He probably re-

flected that whichever way his client might be wrung, it would

be impossible to squeeze out a centime, so he put in a few

brief words to rid the office of a bad customer.

“It is the truth, monsieur. The chief only works at night.

If your business is important, I recommend you to return at

one in the morning.” The stranger looked at the head clerk

with a bewildered expression, and remained motionless for amoment. The clerks, accustomed to every change of counte-

nance, and the odd whimsicalities to which indecision or ab-

sence of mind gives rise in “parties,” went on eating, making as

much noise with their jaws as horses over a manger, and pay-

ing no further heed to the old man.

“I will come again to-night,” said the stranger at length,

with the tenacious desire, peculiar to the unfortunate, to catch

humanity at fault. The only irony allowed to poverty is to drive Justice and

Benevolence to unjust denials. When a poor wretch has con-

victed Society of falsehood, he throws himself more eagerly

on the mercy of God.

“What do you think of that for a cracked pot?” said

Simonnin, without waiting till the old man had shut the door.

“He looks as if he had been buried and dug up again,” said

a clerk.“He is some colonel who wants his arrears of pay,” said the

head clerk.

“No, he is a retired concierge,” said Godeschal.

“I bet you he is a nobleman,” cried Boucard.









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“I bet you he has been a porter,” retorted Godeschal. “Only

porters are gifted by nature with shabby box-coats, as worn

and greasy and frayed as that old body’s. And did you see his

trodden-down boots that let the water in, and his stock which

serves for a shirt? He has slept in a dry arch.”

“He may be of noble birth, and yet have pulled thedoorlatch,” cried Desroches. “It has been known!”

“No,” Boucard insisted, in the midst of laughter, “I main-

tain that he was a brewer in 1789, and a colonel in the time of

the Republic.”

“I bet theatre tickets round that he never was a soldier,”

said Godeschal.

“Done with you,” answered Boucard.

“Monsieur! Monsieur!” shouted the litt le messenger, open-ing the window.

“What are you at now, Simonnin?” asked Boucard.

“I am calling him that you may ask him whether he is a

colonel or a porter; he must know.”

All the clerks laughed. As to the old man, he was already

coming upstairs again.

“What can we say to him?” cried Godeschal.

“Leave it to me,” replied Boucard. The poor man came in nervously, his eyes cast down, per-

haps not to betray how hungry he was by looking too greed-

ily at the eatables.

“Monsieur,” said Boucard, “will you have the kindness to

leave your name, so that M. Derville may know——”

“Chabert.”

“The Colonel who was killed at Eylau?” asked Hure, who,

having so far said nothing, was jealous of adding a jest to all

the others.

“The same, monsieur,” replied the good man, with antiquesimplicity. And he went away.

“Whew!”

“Done brown!”

“Poof!”

“Oh!”

“Ah!”

“Boum!”

“The old rogue!”“Ting-a-ring-ting!”

“Sold again!”

“Monsieur Desroches, you are going to the play without

paying,” said Hure to the fourth clerk, giving him a slap on

the shoulder that might have killed a rhinoceros.

There was a storm of cat-calls, cries, and exclamations,

which all the onomatopeia of the language would fail to rep-

resent.“Which theatre shall we go to?”

“To the opera,” cried the head clerk.

“In the first place,” said Godeschal, “I never mentioned

which theatre. I might, if I chose, take you to see Madame









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Saqui.”

“Madame Saqui is not the play.”

“What is a play?” replied Godeschal. “First, we must de-

fine the point of fact. What did I bet, gentlemen? A play.

What is a play? A spectacle. What is a spectacle? Something

to be seen—”“But on that principle you would pay your bet by taking

us to see the water run under the Pont Neuf!” cried Simonnin,

interrupting him.

“To be seen for money,” Godeschal added.

“But a great many things are to be seen for money that are

not plays. The definition is defective,” said Desroches.

“But do listen to me!”

“You are talking nonsense, my dear boy,” said Boucard.“Is Curtius’ a play?” said Godeschal.

“No,” said the head clerk, “it is a collection of figures—but

it is a spectacle.”

“I bet you a hundred francs to a sou,” Godeschal resumed,

“that Curtius’ Waxworks forms such a show as might be called

a play or theatre. It contains a thing to be seen at various

prices, according to the place you choose to occupy.”

“And so on, and so forth!” said Simonnin.“You mind I don’t box your ears!” said Godeschal.

The clerk shrugged their shoulders.

“Besides, it is not proved that that old ape was not making

game of us,” he said, dropping his argument, which was

drowned in the laughter of the other clerks. “On my honor,

Colonel Chabert is really and truly dead. His wife is married

again to Comte Ferraud, Councillor of State. Madame Ferraud

is one of our clients.”

“Come, the case is remanded till to-morrow,” said Boucard.

“To work, gentlemen. The deuce is in it ; we get nothing donehere. Finish copying that appeal; it must be handed in before

the sitting of the Fourth Chamber, judgment is to be given

to-day. Come, on you go!”

“If he really were Colonel Chabert, would not that impu-

dent rascal Simonnin have felt the leather of his boot in the

right place when he pretended to be deaf?” said Desroches,

regarding this remark as more conclusive than Godeschal’s.

“Since nothing is settled,” said Boucard, “let us all agree togo to the upper boxes of the Francais and see Talma in ‘Nero.’

Simonnin may go to the pit.”

And thereupon the head clerk sat down at his table, and

the others followed his example.

“Given in June eighteen hundred and fourteen (in words),”

said Godeschal. “Ready?”

“Yes,” replied the two copying-clerks and the engrosser,

whose pens forthwith began to creak over the stamped paper,making as much noise in the office as a hundred cockchafers

imprisoned by schoolboys in paper cages.

“ And we hope that my lords on the Bench,” the extemporizing

clerk went on. “Stop! I must read my sentence through again.









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I do not understand it myself.”

“Forty-six (that must often happen) and three forty-nines,”

said Boucard.

“We hope ,” Godeschal began again, after reading all through

the document, “that my lords on the Bench will not be less mag-

nanimous than the august author of the decree, and that they will do justice against the miserable claims of the acting committee of

the chief Board of the Legion of Honor by interpreting the law in

the wide sense we have here set forth——”

“Monsieur Godeschal, wouldn’t you like a glass of water?”

said the little messenger.

“That imp of a boy!” said Boucard. “Here, get on your

double-soled shanks-mare, take this packet, and spin off to

the Invalides.”“Here set forth,” Godeschal went on. “Add in the interest of

Madame la Vicomtesse (at full length) de Grandlieu.”

“What!” cried the chief, “are you thinking of drawing up

an appeal in the case of Vicomtesse de Grandlieu against the

Legion of Honor—a case for the office to stand or fall by?

You are something like an ass! Have the goodness to put aside

your copies and your notes; you may keep all that for the case

of Navarreins against the Hospitals. It is late. I will draw up alittle petition myself, with a due allowance of ‘inasmuch,’ and

go to the Courts myself.”

This scene is typical of the thousand delights which, when

we look back on our youth, make us say, “Those were good

times.”

At about one in the morning Colonel Chabert, self-styled,

knocked at the door of Maitre Derville, attorney to the Court

of First Instance in the Department of the Seine. The porter

told him that Monsieur Derville had not yet come in. Theold man said he had an appointment, and was shown upstairs

to the rooms occupied by the famous lawyer, who, notwith-

standing his youth, was considered to have one of the longest

heads in Paris.

Having rung, the distrustful applicant was not a little as-

tonished at finding the head clerk busily arranging in a con-

venient order on his master’s dining-room table the papers

relating to the cases to be tr ied on the morrow. The clerk, notless astonished, bowed to the Colonel and begged him to take

a seat, which the client did.

“On my word, monsieur, I thought you were joking yes-

terday when you named such an hour for an interview,” said

the old man, with the forced mirth of a ruined man, who does

his best to smile.

“The clerks were joking, but they were speaking the truth

too,” replied the man, going on with his work. “M. Dervillechooses this hour for studying his cases, taking stock of their

possibilities, arranging how to conduct them, deciding on the

line of defence. His prodigious intellect is freer at this hour—

the only time when he can have the silence and quiet needed









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physician, an author, or a judge might have discerned a whole

drama at the sight of its sublime horror, while the least charm

was its resemblance to the grotesques which artists amuse

themselves by sketching on a corner of the lithographic stone

while chatting with a friend.

On seeing the attorney, the stranger started, with the con- vulsive thrill that comes over a poet when a sudden noise rouses

him from a fruitful reverie in silence and at night. The old

man hastily removed his hat and rose to bow to the young

man; the leather lining of his hat was doubtless very greasy;

his wig stuck to it without his noticing it, and left his head

bare, showing his skull horribly disfigured by a scar begin-

ning at the nape of the neck and ending over the right eye, a

prominent seam all across his head. The sudden removal of the dirty wig which the poor man wore to hide this gash gave

the two lawyers no inclination to laugh, so horrible to behold

was this riven skull. The first idea suggested by the sight of

this old wound was, “His intelligence must have escaped

through that cut.”

“If this is not Colonel Chabert, he is some thorough-go-

ing trooper!” thought Boucard.

“Monsieur,” said Derville, “to whom have I the honor of speaking?”

“To Colonel Chabert.”

“Which?”

“He who was killed at Eylau,” replied the old man.

On hearing this strange speech, the lawyer and his clerk

glanced at each other, as much as to say, “He is mad.”

“Monsieur,” the Colonel went on, “I wish to confide to

you the secret of my position.”

A thing worthy of note is the natural intrepidity of law-

yers. Whether from the habit of receiving a great many per-sons, or from the deep sense of the protection conferred on

them by the law, or from confidence in their missions, they

enter everywhere, fearing nothing, like priests and physicians.

Derville signed to Boucard, who vanished.

“During the day, sir,” said the attorney, “I am not so mi-

serly of my time, but at night every minute is precious. So be

brief and concise. Go to the facts without digression. I will

ask for any explanations I may consider necessary. Speak.”Having bid his strange client to be seated, the young man

sat down at the table; but while he gave his attention to the

deceased Colonel, he turned over the bundles of papers.

“You know, perhaps,” said the dead man, “that I com-

manded a cavalry regiment at Eylau. I was of important ser-

vice to the success of Murat’s famous charge which decided

the victory. Unhappily for me, my death is a historical fact,

recorded in Victoires et Conquetes, where it is related in fulldetail. We cut through the three Russian lines, which at once

closed up and formed again, so that we had to repeat the

movement back again. At the moment when we were nearing

the Emperor, after having scattered the Russians, I came against









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and an atmosphere of which I could give you no idea if I

talked till to-morrow. the little air there was to breathe was

foul. I wanted to move, and found no room. I opened my

eyes, and saw nothing. The most alarming circumstance was

the lack of air, and this enlightened me as to my situation. I

understood that no fresh air could penetrate to me, and that Imust die. This thought took off the sense of intolerable pain

which had aroused me. There was a violent singing in my

ears. I heard—or I thought I heard, I will assert nothing—

groans from the world of dead among whom I was lying. Some

nights I still think I hear those stifled moans; though the

remembrance of that time is very obscure, and my memory

very indistinct, in spite of my impressions of far more acute

suffering I was fated to go through, and which have confusedmy ideas.

“But there was something more awful than cries; there

was a silence such as I have never known elsewhere—literally,

the silence of the grave. At last, by raising my hands and

feeling the dead, I discerned a vacant space between my head

and the human carrion above. I could thus measure the space,

granted by a chance of which I knew not the cause. It would

seem that, thanks to the carelessness and the haste with which we had been pitched into the trench, two dead bodies had

leaned across and against each other, forming an angle like

that made by two cards when a child is building a card castle.

Feeling about me at once, for there was no time for play, I

happily felt an arm lying detached, the arm of a Hercules! A

stout bone, to which I owed my rescue. But for this unhoped-

for help, I must have perished. But with a fury you may imag-

ine, I began to work my way through the bodies which sepa-

rated me from the layer of earth which had no doubt been

thrown over us—I say us, as if there had been others living! I worked with a will, monsieur, for here I am! But to this day I

do not know how I succeeded in getting through the pile of

flesh which formed a barrier between me and life. You will

say I had three arms. This crowbar, which I used cleverly

enough, opened out a little air between the bodies I moved,

and I economized my breath. At last I saw daylight, but

through snow!

“At that moment I perceived that my head was cut open.Happily my blood, or that of my comrades, or perhaps the

torn skin of my horse, who knows, had in coagulating formed

a sort of natural plaster. But, in spite of it, I fainted away

when my head came into contact with the snow. However,

the little warmth left in me melted the snow about me; and

when I recovered consciousness, I found myself in the middle

of a round hole, where I stood shouting as long as I could.

But the sun was rising, so I had very little chance of beingheard. Was there any one in the fields yet? I pulled myself

up, using my feet as a spring, resting on one of the dead,

whose ribs were firm. You may suppose that this was not the

moment for saying, ‘Respect courage in misfortune!’ In short,









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monsieur, after enduring the anguish, if the word is strong

enough for my frenzy, of seeing for a long time, yes, quite a

long time, those cursed Germans flying from a voice they

heard where they could see no one, I was dug out by a woman,

who was brave or curious enough to come close to my head,

which must have looked as though it had sprouted from theground like a mushroom. This woman went to fetch her hus-

band, and between them they got me to their poor hovel.

“It would seem that I must have again fallen into a cata-

lepsy—allow me to use the word to describe a state of which

I have no idea, but which, from the account given by my

hosts, I suppose to have been the effect of that malady. I

remained for six months between life and death; not speak-

ing, or, if I spoke, talking in delirium. At last, my hosts gotme admitted to the hospital at Heilsberg.

“You will understand, Monsieur, that I came out of the

womb of the grave as naked as I came from my mother’s; so

that six months afterwards, when I remembered, one fine

morning, that I had been Colonel Chabert, and when, on

recovering my wits, I tried to exact from my nurse rather

more respect than she paid to any poor devil, all my compan-

ions in the ward began to laugh. Luckily for me, the surgeon,out of professional pride, had answered for my cure, and was

naturally interested in his patient. When I told him coher-

ently about my former life, this good man, named

Sparchmann, signed a deposition, drawn up in the legal form

of his country, giving an account of the miraculous way in

which I had escaped from the trench dug for the dead, the

day and hour when I had been found by my benefactress and

her husband, the nature and exact spot of my injuries, adding

to these documents a description of my person.

“Well, monsieur, I have neither these important pieces of evidence, nor the declaration I made before a notary at

Heilsberg, with a view to establishing my identity. From the

day when I was turned out of that town by the events of the

war, I have wandered about like a vagabond, begging my bread,

treated as a madman when I have told my story, without ever

having found or earned a sou to enable me to recover the

deeds which would prove my statements, and restore me to

society. My sufferings have often kept me for six months at atime in some little town, where every care was taken of the

invalid Frenchman, but where he was laughed at to his face as

soon as he said he was Colonel Chabert. For a long time that

laughter, those doubts, used to put me into rages which did

me harm, and which even led to my being locked up at

Stuttgart as a madman. And indeed, as you may judge from

my story, there was ample reason for shutting a man up.

“At the end of two years’ detention, which I was com-pelled to submit to, after hearing my keepers say a thousand

times, ‘Here is a poor man who thinks he is Colonel Chabert ’

to people who would reply, ‘Poor fellow!’ I became convinced

of the impossibility of my own adventure. I grew melancholy,









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resigned, and quiet, and gave up calling myself Colonel

Chabert, in order to get out of my prison, and see France once

more. Oh, monsieur! To see Paris again was a delirium which

I——”

Without finishing his sentence, Colonel Chabert fell into

a deep study, which Derville respected.“One fine day,” his visitor resumed, “one spring day, they

gave me the key of the fields, as we say, and ten thalers, ad-

mitting that I talked quite sensibly on all subjects, and no

longer called myself Colonel Chabert. On my honor, at that

time, and even to this day, sometimes I hate my name. I wish

I were not myself. The sense of my rights kills me. If my

illness had but deprived me of all memory of my past life, I

could be happy. I should have entered the service again underany name, no matter what, and should, perhaps, have been

made Field- Marshal in Austria or Russia. Who knows?”

“Monsieur,” said the attorney, “you have upset all my ideas.

I feel as if I heard you in a dream. Pause for a moment, I beg

of you.”

“You are the only person,” said the Colonel, with a melan-

choly look, “who ever listened to me so patiently. No lawyer

has been willing to lend me ten napoleons to enable me toprocure from Germany the necessary documents to begin my

lawsuit—”

“What lawsuit?” said the attorney, who had forgotten his

client’s painful position in listening to the narrative of his

past sufferings.

“Why, monsieur, is not the Comtesse Ferraud my wife?

She has thirty thousand francs a year, which belong to me,

and she will not give me a son. When I tell lawyers these

things—men of sense; when I propose— I, a beggar—to bring

action against a Count and Countess; when I—a dead man—bring up as against a certificate of death a certificate of mar-

riage and registers of births, they show me out, either with

the air of cold politeness, which you all know how to assume

to rid yourself of a hapless wretch, or brutally, like men who

think they have to deal with a swindler or a madman—it de-

pends on their nature. I have been buried under the dead;

but now I am buried under the living, under papers, under

facts, under the whole of society, which wants to shove meunderground again!”

“Pray resume your narrative,” said Derville.

“ ‘Pray resume it!’ “ cried the hapless old man, taking the

young lawyer’s hand. “That is the first polite word I have

heard since——”

The Colonel wept. Gratitude choked his voice. The ap-

pealing and unutterable eloquence that lies in the eyes, in a

gesture, even in silence, entirely convinced Derville, andtouched him deeply.

“Listen, monsieur,” said he; “I have this evening won three

hundred francs at cards. I may very well lay out half that sum

in making a man happy. I will begin the inquiries and re-









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searches necessary to obtain the documents of which you speak,

and until they arrive I will give you five francs a day. If you

are Colonel Chabert, you will pardon the smallness of the

loan as it is coming from a young man who has his fortune to

make. Proceed.”

The Colonel, as he called himself, sat for a moment mo-tionless and bewildered; the depth of his woes had no doubt

destroyed his powers of belief. Though he was eager in pur-

suit of his military distinction, of his fortune, of himself, per-

haps it was in obedience to the inexplicable feeling, the latent

germ in every man’s heart, to which we owe the experiments

of alchemists, the passion for glory, the discoveries of astronomy

and of physics, everything which prompts man to expand his

being by multiplying himself through deeds or ideas. In hismind the Ego was now but a secondary object, just as the

vanity of success or the pleasures of winning become dearer to

the gambler than the object he has at stake. The young lawyer’s

words were as a miracle to this man, for ten years repudiated

by his wife, by justice, by the whole social creation. To find in

a lawyer’s office the ten gold pieces which had so long been

refused him by so many people, and in so many ways! The

colonel was like the lady who, having been ill of a fever forfifteen years, fancied she had some fresh complaint when she

was cured. There are joys in which we have ceased to believe;

they fall on us, it is like a thunderbolt; they burn us. The

poor man’s gratitude was too great to find utterance. To su-

perficial observers he seemed cold, but Derville saw complete

honesty under this amazement. A swindler would have found

his voice.

“Where was I?” said the Colonel, with the simplicity of a

child or of a soldier, for there is often something of the child

in a true soldier, and almost always something of the soldierin a child, especially in France.

“At Stuttgart. You were out of prison,” said Derville.

“You know my wife?” asked the Colonel.

“Yes,” said Derville, with a bow.

“What is she like?”

“Still quite charming.”

The old man held up his hand, and seemed to be swallow-

ing down some secret anguish with the grave and solemn res-ignation that is characteristic of men who have stood the or-

deal of blood and fire on the battlefield.

“Monsieur,” said he, with a sort of cheerfulness—for he

breathed again, the poor Colonel; he had again risen from the

grave; he had just melted a covering of snow less easily thawed

than that which had once before frozen his head; and he drew

a deep breath, as if he had just escaped from a dungeon—

”Monsieur, if I had been a handsome young fellow, none of my misfortunes would have befallen me. Women believe in

men when they flavor their speeches with the word Love. They

hurry then, they come, they go, they are everywhere at once;

they intrigue, they assert facts, they play the very devil for a









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man who takes their fancy. But how could I interest a woman?

I had a face like a Requiem. I was dressed like a sans-culotte . I

was more like an Esquimaux than a Frenchman—I, who had

formerly been considered one of the smartest of fops in

1799!—I, Chabert, Count of the Empire.

“Well, on the very day when I was turned out into thestreets like a dog, I met the quartermaster of whom I just now

spoke. This old soldier’s name was Boutin. The poor devil and

I made the queerest pair of broken-down hacks I ever set eyes

on. I met him out walking; but though I recognized him, he

could not possibly guess who I was. We went into a tavern

together. In there, when I told him my name, Boutin’s mouth

opened from ear to ear in a roar of laughter, like the bursting

of a mortar. That mirth, monsieur, was one of the keenestpangs I have known. It told me without disguise how great

were the changes in me! I was, then, unrecognizable even to

the humblest and most grateful of my former friends!

“I had once saved Boutin’s life, but it was only the repay-

ment of a debt I owed him. I need not tell you how he did me

this service; it was at Ravenna, in Italy. The house where Boutin

prevented my being stabbed was not extremely respectable.

At that time I was not a colonel, but, like Boutin himself, acommon trooper. Happily there were certain details of this

adventure which could be known only to us two, and when I

recalled them to his mind his incredulity diminished. I then

told him the story of my singular experiences. Although my

eyes and my voice, he told me, were strangely altered, although

I had neither hair, teeth, nor eyebrows, and was as colorless as

an Albino, he at last recognized his Colonel in the beggar,

after a thousand questions, which I answered triumphantly.

“He related his adventures; they were not less extraordi-

nary than my own; he had lately come back from the fron-tiers of China, which he had tried to cross after escaping from

Siberia. He told me of the catastrophe of the Russian cam-

paign, and of Napoleon’s first abdication. That news was one

of the things which caused me most anguish!

“We were two curious derelicts, having been rolled over

the globe as pebbles are rolled by the ocean when storms bear

them from shore to shore. Between us we had seen Egypt,

Syria, Spain, Russia, Holland, Germany, Italy and Dalmatia,England, China, Tartary, Siberia; the only thing wanting was

that neither of us had been to America or the Indies. Finally,

Boutin, who still was more locomotive than I, undertook to

go to Paris as quickly as might be to inform my wife of the

predicament in which I was. I wrote a long letter full of de-

tails to Madame Chabert. That, monsieur, was the fourth! If

I had had any relations, perhaps nothing of all this might

have happened; but, to be frank with you, I am but a work-house child, a soldier, whose sole fortune was his courage, whose

sole family is mankind at large, whose country is France, whose

only protector is the Almighty.—Nay, I am wrong! I had a

father—the Emperor! Ah! if he were but here, the dear man!









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If he could see his Chabert , as he used to call me, in the state

in which I am now, he would be in a rage! What is to be

done? Our sun is set, and we are all out in the cold now. After

all, political events might account for my wife’s silence!

“Boutin set out. He was a lucky fellow! He had two bears,

admirably trained, which brought him in a living. I could notgo with him; the pain I suffered forbade my walking long

stages. I wept, monsieur, when we parted, after I had gone as

far as my state allowed in company with him and his bears.

At Carlsruhe I had an attack of neuralgia in the head, and lay

for six weeks on straw in an inn. I should never have ended if

I were to tell you all the distresses of my life as a beggar.

Moral suffering, before which physical suffering pales, never-

theless excites less pity, because it is not seen. I remembershedding tears, as I stood in front of a fine house in Strassburg

where once I had given an entertainment, and where nothing

was given me, not even a piece of bread. Having agreed with

Boutin on the road I was to take, I went to every post-office

to ask if there were a letter or some money for me. I arrived at

Paris without having found either. What despair I had been

forced to endure! ‘Boutin must be dead! I told myself, and in

fact the poor fellow was killed at Waterloo. I heard of hisdeath later, and by mere chance. His errand to my wife had,

of course, been fruitless.

“At last I entered Paris—with the Cossacks. To me this

was grief on grief. On seeing the Russians in France, I quite

forgot that I had no shoes on my feet nor money in my pocket.

Yes, monsieur, my clothes were in tatters. The evening before

I reached Paris I was obliged to bivouac in the woods of Claye.

The chill of the night air no doubt brought on an attack of

some nameless complaint which seized me as I was crossing

the Faubourg Saint-Martin. I dropped almost senseless atthe door of an ironmonger’s shop. When I recovered I was in

a bed in the Hotel-Dieu. There I stayed very contentedly for

about a month. I was then turned out; I had no money, but I

was well, and my feet were on the good stones of Paris. With

what delight and haste did I make my way to the Rue du

Mont-Blanc, where my wife should be living in a house be-

longing to me! Bah! the Rue du Mont-Blanc was now the

Rue de la Chausee d’Antin; I could not find my house; it hadbeen sold and pulled down. Speculators had built several houses

over my gardens. Not knowing that my wife had married M.

Ferraud, I could obtain no information.

“At last I went to the house of an old lawyer who had been

in charge of my affairs. This worthy man was dead, after sell-

ing his connection to a younger man. This gentleman informed

me, to my great surprise, of the administration of my estate,

the settlement of the moneys, of my wife’s marriage, and thebirth of her two children. When I told him that I was Colo-

nel Chabert, he laughed so heartily that I left him without

saying another word. My detention at Stuttgart had suggested

possibilities of Charenton, and I determined to act with cau-









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tion. Then, monsieur, knowing where my wife lived, I went to

her house, my heart high with hope.—Well,” said the Colo-

nel, with a gesture of concentrated fury, “when I called under

an assumed name I was not admitted, and on the day when I

used my own I was turned out of doors.

“To see the Countess come home from a ball or the play in the early morning, I have sat whole nights through, crouch-

ing close to the wall of her gateway. My eyes pierced the depths

of the carriage, which flashed past me with the swiftness of

lightning, and I caught a glimpse of the woman who is my

wife and no longer mine. Oh, from that day I have lived for

vengeance!” cried the old man in a hollow voice, and suddenly

standing up in front of Derville. “She knows that I am alive;

since my return she has had two letters written with my ownhand. She loves me no more!—I—I know not whether I love

or hate her. I long for her and curse her by turns. To me she

owes all her fortune, all her happiness; well, she has not sent

me the very smallest pittance. Sometimes I do not know what

will become of me!”

With these words the veteran dropped on to his chair again

and remained motionless. Derville sat in silence, studying his

client.

“It is a serious business,” he said at length, mechanically.

“Even granting the genuineness of the documents to be pro-

cured from Heilsberg, it is not proved to me that we can at

once win our case. It must go before three tribunals in succes-

sion. I must think such a matter over with a clear head; it is

quite exceptional.”

“Oh,” said the Colonel, coldly, with a haughty jerk of his

head, “if I fail, I can die—but not alone.”

The feeble old man had vanished. The eyes were those of

a man of energy, lighted up with the spark of desire and revenge.

“We must perhaps compromise,” said the lawyer.

“Compromise!” echoed Colonel Chabert. “Am I dead, or

am I alive?”

“I hope, monsieur,” the attorney went on, “that you will

follow my advice. Your cause is mine. You will soon perceive

the interest I take in your situation, almost unexampled in

judicial records. For the moment I will give you a letter to my notary, who will pay to your order fifty francs every ten days.

It would be unbecoming for you to come here to receive alms.

If you are Colonel Chabert, you ought to be at no man’s mercy.

I shall record these advances as a loan; you have estates to

recover; you are rich.”

This delicate compassion brought tears to the old man’s

eyes. Derville rose hastily, for it was perhaps not correct for a

lawyer to show emotion; he went into the adjoining room,

and came back with an unsealed letter, which he gave to the

Colonel. When the poor man held it in his hand, he felt

through the paper two gold pieces.

“Will you be good enough to describe the documents, and









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tell me the name of the town, and in what kingdom?” said the

lawyer.

The Colonel dictated the information, and verified the

spelling of the names of places; then he took his hat in one

hand, looked at Derville, and held out the other—a horny

hand, saying with much simplicity:“On my honor, sir, after the Emperor, you are the man to

whom I shall owe most. You are a splendid fellow!”

The attorney clapped his hand into the Colonel’s, saw him

to the stairs, and held a light for him.

“Boucard,” said Derville to his head clerk, “I have just lis-

tened to a tale that may cost me five and twenty louis. If I am

robbed, I shall not regret the money, for I shall have seen the

most consummate actor of the day.” When the Colonel was in the street and close to a lamp,

he took the two twenty-franc pieces out of the letter and

looked at them for a moment under the light. It was the first

gold he had seen for nine years.

“I may smoke cigars!” he said to himself.

About three months after this interview, at night, in

Derville’s room, the notary commissioned to advance the half-

pay on Derville’s account to his eccentric client, came to con-

sult the attorney on a serious matter, and began by begging

him to refund the six hundred francs that the old soldier had

received.

“Are you amusing yourself with pensioning the old army?”

said the notary, laughing—a young man named Crottat, who

had just bought up the office in which he had been head

clerk, his chief having fled in consequence of a disastrous bank-

ruptcy.

“I have to thank you, my dear sir, for reminding me of thataffair,” replied Derville. “My philanthropy will not carry me

beyond twenty- five louis; I have, I fear, already been the

dupe of my patriotism.”

As Derville finished the sentence, he saw on his desk the

papers his head clerk had laid out for him. His eye was struck

by the appearance of the stamps—long, square, and triangu-

lar, in red and blue ink, which distinguished a letter that had

come through the Prussian, Austrian, Bavarian, and Frenchpost-offices.

“Ah ha!” said he with a laugh, “here is the last act of the

comedy; now we shall see if I have been taken in!”

He took up the letter and opened it; but he could not

read it; it was written in German.

“Boucard, go yourself and have this letter translated, and

bring it back immediately,” said Derville, half opening his

study door, and giving the letter to the head clerk.

The notary at Berlin, to whom the lawyer had written,

informed him that the documents he had been requested to

forward would arrive within a few days of this note announc-

ing them. They were, he said, all perfectly regular and duly









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witnessed, and legally stamped to serve as evidence in law. He

also informed him that almost all the witnesses to the facts

recorded under these affidavits were still to be found at Eylau,

in Prussia, and that the woman to whom M. le Comte Chabert

owed his life was still living in a suburb of Heilsberg.

“This looks like business,” cried Derville, when Boucardhad given him the substance of the letter. “But look here, my

boy,” he went on, addressing the notary, “I shall want some

information which ought to exist in your office. Was it not

that old rascal Roguin—?”

“We will say that unfortunate, that ill-used Roguin,” in-

terrupted Alexandre Crottat with a laugh.

“Well, was it not that ill-used man who has just carried

off eight hundred thousand francs of his clients’ money, andreduced several families to despair, who effected the settle-

ment of Chabert’s estate? I fancy I have seen that in the docu-

ments in our case of Ferraud.”

“Yes,” said Crottat. “It was when I was third clerk; I cop-

ied the papers and studied them thoroughly. Rose Chapotel,

wife and widow of Hyacinthe, called Chabert, Count of the

Empire, grand officer of the Legion of Honor. They had

married without settlement; thus, they held all the property

in common. To the best of my recollections, the personalty

was about six hundred thousand francs. Before his marriage,

Colonel Chabert had made a will in favor of the hospitals of

Paris, by which he left them one-quarter of the fortune he

might possess at the time of his decease, the State to take the

other quarter. The will was contested, there was a forced sale,

and then a division, for the attorneys went at a pace. At the

time of the settlement the monster who was then governing

France handed over to the widow, by special decree, the por-

tion bequeathed to the treasury.”“So that Comte Chabert’s personal fortune was no more

than three hundred thousand francs?”

“Consequently so it was, old fellow!” said Crottat. “You

lawyers sometimes are very clear-headed, though you are ac-

cused of false practices in pleading for one side or the other.”

Colonel Chabert, whose address was written at the bot-

tom of the first receipt he had given the notary, was lodging

in the Faubourg Saint- Marceau, Rue du Petit-Banquier, withan old quartermaster of the Imperial Guard, now a cowkeeper,

named Vergniaud. Having reached the spot, Derville was

obliged to go on foot in search of his client, for his coachman

declined to drive along an unpaved street, where the ruts were

rather too deep for cab wheels. Looking about him on all

sides, the lawyer at last discovered at the end of the street

nearest to the boulevard, between two walls built of bones

and mud, two shabby stone gate-posts, much knocked about

by carts, in spite of two wooden stumps that served as blocks.

These posts supported a cross beam with a penthouse coping

of tiles, and on the beam, in red letters, were the words,

“Vergniaud, dairyman.” To the right of this inscription were










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some eggs, to the left a cow, all painted in white. The gate was

open, and no doubt remained open all day. Beyond a good-

sized yard there was a house facing the gate, if indeed the

name of house may be applied to one of the hovels built in

the neighborhood of Paris, which are like nothing else, not

even the most wretched dwellings in the country, of whichthey have all the poverty without their poetry.

Indeed, in the midst of the fields, even a hovel may have a

certain grace derived from the pure air, the verdure, the open

country—a hill, a serpentine road, vineyards, quickset hedges,

moss-grown thatch and rural implements; but poverty in Paris

gains dignity only by horror. Though recently built, this house

seemed ready to fall into ruins. None of its materials had

found a legitimate use; they had been collected from the vari-ous demolitions which are going on every day in Paris. On a

shutter made of the boards of a shop-sign Derville read the

words, “Fancy Goods.” The windows were all mismatched and

grotesquely placed. The ground floor, which seemed to be the

habitable part, was on one side raised above the soil, and on

the other sunk in the rising ground. Between the gate and the

house lay a puddle full of stable litter, into which flowed the

rain-water and house waste. The back wall of this frail con-

struction, which seemed rather more solidly built than the

rest, supported a row of barred hutches, where rabbits bred

their numerous families. To the right of the gate was the

cowhouse, with a loft above for fodder; it communicated with

the house through the dairy. To the left was a poultry yard,

with a stable and pig-styes, the roofs finished, like that of the

house, with rough deal boards nailed so as to overlap, and

shabbily thatched with rushes.

Like most of the places where the elements of the huge

meal daily devoured by Paris are every day prepared, the yardDerville now entered showed traces of the hurry that comes

of the necessity for being ready at a fixed hour. The large pot-

bellied tin cans in which milk is carried, and the little pots for

cream, were flung pell-mell at the dairy door, with their linen-

covered stoppers. The rags that were used to clean them, flut-

tered in the sunshine, riddled with holes, hanging to strings

fastened to poles. The placid horse, of a breed known only to

milk-women, had gone a few steps from the cart, and wasstanding in front of the stable, the door being shut. A goat

was munching the shoots of a starved and dusty vine that

clung to the cracked yellow wall of the house. A cat, squat-

ting on the cream jars, was licking them over. The fowls, scared

by Derville’s approach, scuttered away screaming, and the

watch-dog barked.

“And the man who decided the victory at Eylau is to be

found here!” said Derville to himself, as his eyes took in at a

glance the general effect of the squalid scene.

The house had been left in charge of three little boys.

One, who had climbed to the top of the cart loaded with hay,

was pitching stones into the chimney of a neighboring house,










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in the hope that they might fall into a saucepan; another was

trying to get a pig into a cart, to hoist it by making the whole

thing tilt. When Derville asked them if M. Chabert lived

there, neither of them replied, but all three looked at him

with a sort of bright stupidity, if I may combine those two

words. Derville repeated his questions, but without success.Provoked by the saucy cunning of these three imps, he abused

them with the sort of pleasantry which young men think they

have the right to address to little boys, and they broke the

silence with a horse-laugh. Then Derville was angry.

The Colonel, hearing him, now came out of the little low

room, close to the dairy, and stood on the threshold of his

doorway with indescribable military coolness. He had in his

mouth a very finely- colored pipe—a technical phrase to asmoker—a humble, short clay pipe of the kind called “brule-

queule .” He lifted the peak of a dreadfully greasy cloth cap,

saw Derville, and came straight across the midden to join his

benefactor the sooner, calling out in friendly tones to the boys:

“Silence in the ranks!”

The children at once kept a respectful silence, which

showed the power the old soldier had over them.

“Why did you not write to me?” he said to Derville. “Go

along by the cowhouse! There—the path is paved there,” he

exclaimed, seeing the lawyer’s hesitancy, for he did not wish

to wet his feet in the manure heap.

Jumping from one dry spot to another, Derville reached

the door by which the Colonel had come out. Chabert seemed

but ill pleased at having to receive him in the bed-room he

occupied; and, in fact, Derville found but one chair there.

The Colonel’s bed consisted of some trusses of straw, over

which his hostess had spread two or three of those old frag-

ments of carpet, picked up heaven knows where, which milk- women use to cover the seats of their carts. The floor was

simply the trodden earth. The walls, sweating salt-petre, green

with mould, and full of cracks, were so excessively damp that

on the side where the Colonel’s bed was a reed mat had been

nailed. The famous box-coat hung on a nail. Two pairs of old

boots lay in a corner. There was not a sign of linen. On the

worm-eaten table the Bulletins de la Grande Armee , reprinted

by Plancher, lay open, and seemed to be the Colonel’s read-ing; his countenance was calm and serene in the midst of this

squalor. His visit to Derville seemed to have altered his fea-

tures; the lawyer perceived in them traces of a happy feeling,

a particular gleam set there by hope.

“Does the smell of the pipe annoy you?” he said, placing

the dilapidated straw-bottomed chair for his lawyer.

“But, Colonel, you are dreadfully uncomfortable here!”

The speech was wrung from Derville by the distrust natural

to lawyers, and the deplorable experience which they derive

early in life from the appalling and obscure tragedies at which

they look on.

“Here,” said he to himself, “is a man who has of course

P h h i C d ll C ll i B k h lf CD











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spent my money in satisfying a trooper’s three theological

virtues—play, wine, and women!”

“To be sure, monsieur, we are not distinguished for luxury

here. It is a camp lodging, tempered by friendship, but——”

And the soldier shot a deep glance at the man of law—”I have

done no one wrong, I have never turned my back on anybody,and I sleep in peace.”

Derville reflected that there would be some want of deli-

cacy in asking his client to account for the sums of money he

had advanced, so he merely said:

“But why would you not come to Paris, where you might

have lived as cheaply as you do here, but where you would

have been better lodged?”

“Why,” replied the Colonel, “the good folks with whom Iam living had taken me in and fed me gratis for a year. How

could I leave them just when I had a little money? Besides,

the father of those three pickles is an old Egyptian—”

“An Egyptian!”

“We give that name to the troopers who came back from

the expedition into Egypt, of which I was one. Not merely

are all who get back brothers; Vergniaud was in my regiment.

We have shared a draught of water in the desert; and besides,

I have not yet finished teaching his brats to read.”

“He might have lodged you better for your money,” said

Derville.

“Bah!” said the Colonel, “his children sleep on the straw as

I do. He and his wife have no better bed; they are very poor

you see. They have taken a bigger business than they can

manage. But if I recover my fortune . . . However, it does very

well.”

“Colonel, to-morrow or the next day, I shall receive your

papers from Heilsberg. The woman who dug you out is stillalive!”

“Curse the money! To think I haven’t got any!” he cried,

flinging his pipe on the ground.

Now, a well-colored pipe is to a smoker a precious posses-

sion; but the impulse was so natural, the emotion so gener-

ous, that every smoker, and the excise office itself, would have

pardoned this crime of treason to tobacco. Perhaps the angels

may have picked up the pieces.“Colonel, it is an exceedingly complicated business,” said

Derville as they left the room to walk up and down in the

sunshine.

“To me,” said the soldier, “it appears exceedingly simple. I

was thought to be dead, and here I am! Give me back my wife

and my fortune; give me the rank of General, to which I have

a right, for I was made Colonel of the Imperial Guard the

day before the battle of Eylau.”

“Things are not done so in the legal world,” said Derville.

“Listen to me. You are Colonel Chabert, I am glad to think it;

but it has to be proved judicially to persons whose interest it

will be to deny it. Hence, your papers will be disputed. That

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contention will give rise to ten or twelve preliminary inquir-

ies. Every question will be sent under contradiction up to the

supreme court, and give rise to so many costly suits, which

will hang on for a long time, however eagerly I may push

them. Your opponents will demand an inquiry, which we can-

not refuse, and which may necessitate the sending of a com-mission of investigation to Prussia. But even if we hope for

the best; supposing that justice should at once recognize you

as Colonel Chabert—can we know how the questions will be

settled that will arise out of the very innocent bigamy com-

mitted by the Comtesse Ferraud?

“In your case, the point of law is unknown to the Code,

and can only be decided as a point in equity, as a jury decides

in the delicate cases presented by the social eccentricities of some criminal prosecutions. Now, you had no children by

your marriage; M. le Comte Ferraud has two. The judges might

pronounce against the marriage where the family ties are weak-

est, to the confirmation of that where they are stronger, since

it was contracted in perfect good faith. Would you be in a

very becoming moral position if you insisted, at your age, and

in your present circumstances, in resuming your rights over a

woman who no longer loves you? You will have both your

wife and her husband against you, two important persons who

might influence the Bench. Thus, there are many elements

which would prolong the case; you will have time to grow old

in the bitterest regrets.”

“And my fortune?”

“Do you suppose you had a fine fortune?”

“Had I not thirty thousand francs a year?”

“My dear Colonel, in 1799 you made a will before your

marriage, leaving one-quarter of your property to hospitals.”

“That is true.”“Well, when you were reported dead, it was necessary to

make a valuation, and have a sale, to give this quarter away.

Your wife was not particular about honesty as to the poor.

The valuation, in which she no doubt took care not to in-

clude the ready money or jewelry, or too much of the plate,

and in which the furniture would be estimated at two-thirds

of its actual cost, either to benefit her, or to lighten the suc-

cession duty, and also because a valuer can be held responsiblefor the declared value—the valuation thus made stood at six

hundred thousand francs. Your wife had a right of half for

her share. Everything was sold and bought in by her; she got

something out of it all, and the hospitals got their seventy-

five thousand francs. Then, as the remainder went to the State,

since you had made no mention of your wife in your will, the

Emperor restored to your widow by decree the residue which

would have reverted to the Exchequer. So, now, what can you

claim? Three hundred thousand francs, no more, and minus

the costs.”

“And you call that justice!” said the Colonel, in dismay.

“Why, certainly—”

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“A pretty kind of justice!”

“So it is, my dear Colonel. You see, that what you thought

so easy is not so. Madame Ferraud might even choose to keep

the sum given to her by the Emperor.”

“But she was not a widow. The decree is utterly void——

”“I agree with you. But every case can get a hearing. Listen

to me. I think that under these circumstances a compromise

would be both for her and for you the best solution of the

question. You will gain by it a more considerable sum than

you can prove a right to.”

“That would be to sell my wife!”

“With twenty-four thousand francs a year you could find

a woman who, in the position in which you are, would suit you better than your own wife, and make you happier. I pro-

pose going this very day to see the Comtesse Ferraud and

sounding the ground; but I would not take such a step with-

out giving you due notice.”

“Let us go together.”

“What, just as you are?” said the lawyer. “No, my dear

Colonel, no. You might lose your case on the spot.”

“Can I possibly gain it?”

“On every count,” replied Derville. “But, my dear Colonel

Chabert, you overlook one thing. I am not rich; the price of

my connection is not wholly paid up. If the bench should

allow you a maintenance, that is to say, a sum advanced on

your prospects, they will not do so till you have proved that

you are Comte Chabert, grand officer of the Legion of Honor.”

“To be sure, I am a grand officer of the Legion of Honor;

I had forgotten that,” said he simply.

“Well, until then,” Derville went on, “will you not have to

engage pleaders, to have documents copied, to keep the un-derlings of the law going, and to support yourself? The ex-

penses of the preliminary inquiries will, at a rough guess,

amount to ten or twelve thousand francs. I have not so much

to lend you—I am crushed as it is by the enormous interest I

have to pay on the money I borrowed to buy my business;

and you?—Where can you find it.”

Large tears gathered in the poor veteran’s faded eyes, and

rolled down his withered cheeks. This outlook of difficultiesdiscouraged him. The social and the legal world weighed on

his breast like a nightmare.

“I will go to the foot of the Vendome column!” he cried. “I

will call out: ‘I am Colonel Chabert who rode through the

Russian square at Eylau!’—The statue—he—he will know

me.”

“And you will find yourself in Charenton.”

At this terrible name the soldier’s transports collapsed.

“And will there be no hope for me at the Ministry of War?”

“The war office!” said Derville. “Well, go there; but take a

formal legal opinion with you, nullifying the certificate of

your death. The government offices would be only too glad if












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they could annihilate the men of the Empire.”

The Colonel stood for a while, speechless, motionless, his

eyes fixed, but seeing nothing, sunk in bottomless despair.

Military justice is ready and swift; it decides with Turk-like

finality, and almost always rightly. This was the only justice

known to Chabert. As he saw the labyrinth of difficultiesinto which he must plunge, and how much money would be

required for the journey, the poor old soldier was mortally hit

in that power peculiar to man, and called the Will. He thought

it would be impossible to live as party to a lawsuit; it seemed

a thousand times simpler to remain poor and a beggar, or to

enlist as a trooper if any regiment would pass him.

His physical and mental sufferings had already impaired

his bodily health in some of the most important organs. He was on the verge of one of those maladies for which medicine

has no name, and of which the seat is in some degree variable,

like the nervous system itself, the part most frequently at-

tacked of the whole human machine, a malady which may be

designated as the heart-sickness of the unfortunate. However

serious this invisible but real disorder might already be, it

could still be cured by a happy issue. But a fresh obstacle, an

unexpected incident, would be enough to wreck this vigorous

constitution, to break the weakened springs, and produce the

hesitancy, the aimless, unfinished movements, which physi-

ologists know well in men undermined by grief.

Derville, detecting in his client the symptoms of extreme

dejection, said to him:

“Take courage; the end of the business cannot fail to be in

your favor. Only, consider whether you can give me your whole

confidence and blindly accept the result I may think best for

your interests.”

“Do what you will,” said Chabert.“Yes, but you surrender yourself to me like a man march-

ing to his death.”

“Must I not be left to live without a position, without a

name? Is that endurable?”

“That is not my view of it,” said the lawyer. “We will try a

friendly suit, to annul both your death certificate and your

marriage, so as to put you in possession of your rights. You

may even, by Comte Ferraud’s intervention, have your namereplaced on the army list as general, and no doubt you will

get a pension.”

“Well, proceed then,” said Chabert. “I put myself entirely

in your hands.”

“I will send you a power of attorney to sign,” said Derville.

“Good- bye. Keep up your courage. If you want money, rely

on me.”

Chabert warmly wrung the lawyer’s hand, and remained

standing with his back against the wall, not having the energy

to follow him excepting with his eyes. Like all men who know

but little of legal matters, he was frightened by this unfore-

seen struggle.












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During their interview, several times, the figure of a man

posted in the street had come forward from behind one of

the gate-pillars, watching for Derville to depart, and he now

accosted the lawyer. He was an old man, wearing a blue waist-

coat and a white-pleated kilt, like a brewer’s; on his head was

an otter-skin cap. His face was tanned, hollow-cheeked, and wrinkled, but ruddy on the cheek-bones by hard work and

exposure to the open air.

“Asking your pardon, sir,” said he, taking Derville by the

arm, “if I take the liberty of speaking to you. But I fancied,

from the look of you, that you were a friend of our General’s.”

“And what then?” replied Derville. “What concern have

you with him?— But who are you?” said the cautious lawyer.

“I am Louis Vergniaud,” he replied at once. “I have a few words to say to you.”

“So you are the man who has lodged Comte Chabert as I

have found him?”

“Asking your pardon, sir, he has the best room. I would

have given him mine if I had had but one; I could have slept

in the stable. A man who has suffered as he has, who teaches

my kids to read, a general, an Egyptian, the first lieutenant I

ever served under—What do you think? —Of us all, he is

best served. I shared what I had with him. Unfortunately, it is

not much to boast of—bread, milk, eggs. Well, well; it’s neigh-

bors’ fare, sir. And he is heartily welcome.—But he has hurt

our feelings.”

“He?”

“Yes, sir, hurt our feelings. To be plain with you, I have

taken a larger business than I can manage, and he saw it. Well,

it worried him; he must needs mind the horse! I says to him,

‘Really, General——’ ‘Bah!’ says he, ‘I am not going to eat my

head off doing nothing. I learned to rub a horse down many a year ago.’—I had some bills out for the purchase money of

my dairy—a fellow named Grados— Do you know him, sir?”

“But, my good man, I have not time to listen to your story.

Only tell me how the Colonel offended you.”

“He hurt our feelings, sir, as sure as my name is Louis

Vergniaud, and my wife cried about it. He heard from our

neighbors that we had not a sou to begin to meet the bills

with. The old soldier, as he is, he saved up all you gave him, he watched for the bill to come in, and he paid it. Such a trick!

While my wife and me, we knew he had no tobacco, poor old

boy, and went without.—Oh! now—yes, he has his cigar ev-

ery morning! I would sell my soul for it—No, we are hurt.

Well, so I wanted to ask you—for he said you were a good

sort—to lend us a hundred crowns on the stock, so that we

may get him some clothes, and furnish his room. He thought

he was getting us out of debt, you see? Well, it’s just the other

way; the old man is running us into debt—and hurt our feel-

ings!—He ought not to have stolen a march on us like that.

And we his friends, too!—On my word as an honest man, as

sure as my name is Louis Vergniaud, I would sooner sell up












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and enlist than fail to pay you back your money——”

Derville looked at the dairyman, and stepped back a few

paces to glance at the house, the yard, the manure-pool, the

cowhouse, the rabbits, the children.

“On my honor, I believe it is characteristic of virtue to

have nothing to do with riches!” thought he.“All right, you shall have your hundred crowns, and more.

But I shall not give them to you; the Colonel will be rich

enough to help, and I will not deprive him of the pleasure.”

“And will that be soon?”

“Why, yes.”

“Ah, dear God! how glad my wife will be!” and the

cowkeeper’s tanned face seemed to expand.

“Now,” said Derville to himself, as he got into his cab again,“let us call on our opponent. We must not show our hand,

but try to see hers, and win the game at one stroke. She must

be frightened. She is a woman. Now, what frightens women

most? A woman is afraid of nothing but . . .”

And he set to work to study the Countess’ position, fall-

ing into one of those brown studies to which great politicians

give themselves up when concocting their own plans and try-

ing to guess the secrets of a hostile Cabinet. Are not attor-

neys, in a way, statesmen in charge of private affairs?

But a brief survey of the situation in which the Comte

Ferraud and his wife now found themselves is necessary for a

comprehension of the lawyer’s cleverness.

Monsieur le Comte Ferraud was the only son of a former

Councillor in the old Parlement of Paris, who had emigrated

during the Reign of Terror, and so, though he saved his head,

lost his fortune. He came back under the Consulate, and re-

mained persistently faithful to the cause of Louis XVIII., in

whose circle his father had moved before the Revolution. Hethus was one of the party in the Faubourg Saint-Germain

which nobly stood out against Napoleon’s blandishments. The

reputation for capacity gained by the young Count—then

simply called Monsieur Ferraud—made him the object of

the Emperor’s advances, for he was often as well pleased at his

conquests among the aristocracy as at gaining a battle. The

Count was promised the restitution of his title, of such of his

estates as had not been sold, and he was shown in perspectivea place in the ministry or as senator.

The Emperor fell.

At the time of Comte Chabert’s death, M. Ferraud was a

young man of six-and-twenty, without a fortune, of pleasing

appearance, who had had his successes, and whom the

Faubourg Saint-Germain had adopted as doing it credit; but

Madame la Comtesse Chabert had managed to turn her share

of her husband’s fortune to such good account that, after eigh-

teen months of widowhood, she had about forty thousand

francs a year. Her marriage to the young Count was not re-

garded as news in the circles of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

Napoleon, approving of this union, which carried out his idea

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of fusion, restored to Madame Chabert the money falling to

the Exchequer under her husband’s will; but Napoleon’s hopes

were again disappointed. Madame Ferraud was not only in

love with her lover; she had also been fascinated by the notion

of getting into the haughty society which, in spite of its hu-

miliation, was still predominant at the Imperial Court. By this marriage all her vanities were as much gratified as her

passions. She was to become a real fine lady. When the

Faubourg Saint-Germain understood that the young Count’s

marriage did not mean desertion, its drawing-rooms were

thrown open to his wife.

Then came the Restoration. The Count’s political advance-

ment was not rapid. He understood the exigencies of the situ-

ation in which Louis XVIII. found himself; he was one of the inner circle who waited till the “Gulf of Revolution should

be closed”—for this phrase of the King’s, at which the Liber-

als laughed so heartily, had a political sense. The order quoted

in the long lawyer’s preamble at the beginning of this story

had, however, put him in possession of two tracts of forest,

and of an estate which had considerably increased in value

during its sequestration. At the present moment, though

Comte Ferraud was a Councillor of State, and a Director-

General, he regarded his position as merely the first step of

his political career.

Wholly occupied as he was by the anxieties of consuming

ambition, he had attached to himself, as secretary, a ruined

attorney named Delbecq, a more than clever man, versed in

all the resources of the law, to whom he left the conduct of his

private affairs. This shrewd practitioner had so well under-

stood his position with the Count as to be honest in his own

interest. He hoped to get some place by his master’s influ-

ence, and he made the Count’s fortune his first care. His con-duct so effectually gave the lie to his former life, that he was

regarded as a slandered man. The Countess, with the tact and

shrewdness of which most women have a share more or less,

understood the man’s motives, watched him quietly, and man-

aged him so well, that she had made good use of him for the

augmentation of her private fortune. She had contrived to

make Delbecq believe that she ruled her husband, and had

promised to get him appointed President of an inferior courtin some important provincial town, if he devoted himself en-

tirely to her interests.

The promise of a place, not dependent on changes of min-

istry, which would allow of his marrying advantageously, and

rising subsequently to a high political position, by being cho-

sen Depute, made Delbecq the Countess’ abject slave. He had

never allowed her to miss one of those favorable chances which

the fluctuations of the Bourse and the increased value of prop-

erty afforded to clever financiers in Paris during the first three

years after the Restoration. He had trebled his protectress’

capital, and all the more easily because the Countess had no

scruples as to the means which might make her an enormous

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fortune as quickly as possible. The emoluments derived by

the Count from the places he held she spent on the house-

keeping, so as to reinvest her dividends; and Delbecq lent

himself to these calculations of avarice without trying to ac-

count for her motives. People of that sort never trouble them-

selves about any secrets of which the discovery is not neces-sary to their own interests. And, indeed, he naturally found

the reason in the thirst for money, which taints almost every

Parisian woman; and as a fine fortune was needed to support

the pretensions of Comte Ferraud, the secretary sometimes

fancied that he saw in the Countess’ greed a consequence of

her devotion to a husband with whom she still was in love.

The Countess buried the secrets of her conduct at the bot-

tom of her heart. There lay the secrets of life and death to her,there lay the turning-point of this history.

At the beginning of the year 1818 the Restoration was

settled on an apparently immovable foundation; its doctrines

of government, as understood by lofty minds, seemed calcu-

lated to bring to France an era of renewed prosperity, and

Parisian society changed its aspect. Madame la Comtesse

Ferraud found that by chance she had achieved for love a

marriage that had brought her fortune and gratified ambi-

tion. Still young and handsome, Madame Ferraud played the

part of a woman of fashion, and lived in the atmosphere of

the Court. Rich herself, with a rich husband who was cried

up as one of the ablest men of the royalist party, and, as a

friend of the King, certain to be made Minister, she belonged

to the aristocracy, and shared its magnificence. In the midst

of this triumph she was attacked by a moral canker. There are

feelings which women guess in spite of the care men take to

bury them. On the first return of the King, Comte Ferraud

had begun to regret his marriage. Colonel Chabert’s widow had not been the means of allying him to anybody; he was

alone and unsupported in steering his way in a course full of

shoals and beset by enemies. Also, perhaps, when he came to

judge his wife coolly, he may have discerned in her certain

vices of education which made her unfit to second him in his

schemes.

A speech he made, a propos of Talleyrand’s marriage, en-

lightened the Countess, to whom it proved that if he had stillbeen a free man she would never have been Madame Ferraud.

What woman could forgive this repentance? Does it not in-

clude the germs of every insult, every crime, every form of

repudiation? But what a wound must it have left in the

Countess’ heart, supposing that she lived in the dread of her

first husband’s return? She had known that he still lived, and

she had ignored him. Then during the time when she had

heard no more of him, she had chosen to believe that he had

fallen at Waterloo with the Imperial Eagle, at the same time

as Boutin. She resolved, nevertheless, to bind the Count to

her by the strongest of all ties, by a chain of gold, and vowed

to be so rich that her fortune might make her second mar-

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riage dissoluble, if by chance Colonel Chabert should ever

reappear. And he had reappeared; and she could not explain

to herself why the struggle she had dreaded had not already

begun. Suffering, sickness, had perhaps delivered her from

that man. Perhaps he was half mad, and Charenton might yet

do her justice. She had not chosen to take either Delbecq orthe police into her confidence, for fear of putting herself in

their power, or of hastening the catastrophe. There are in Paris

many women who, like the Countess Ferraud, live with an

unknown moral monster, or on the brink of an abyss; a callus

forms over the spot that tortures them, and they can still laugh

and enjoy themselves.

“There is something very strange in Comte Ferraud’s po-

sition,” said Derville to himself, on emerging from his longreverie, as his cab stopped at the door of the Hotel Ferraud in

the Rue de Varennes. “How is it that he, so rich as he is, and

such a favorite with the King, is not yet a peer of France? It

may, to be sure, be true that the King, as Mme. de Grandlieu

was telling me, desires to keep up the value of the pairie by

not bestowing it right and left. And, after all, the son of a

Councillor of the Parlement is not a Crillon nor a Rohan. A

Comte Ferraud can only get into the Upper Chamber sur-

reptitiously. But if his marriage were annulled, could he not

get the dignity of some old peer who has only daughters trans-

ferred to himself, to the King’s great satisfaction? At any rate

this will be a good bogey to put forward and frighten the

Countess,” thought he as he went up the steps.

Derville had without knowing it laid his finger on the

hidden wound, put his hand on the canker that consumed

Madame Ferraud.

She received him in a pretty winter dining-room, where

she was at breakfast, while playing with a monkey tethered by a chain to a little pole with climbing bars of iron. The Count-

ess was in an elegant wrapper; the curls of her hair, carelessly

pinned up, escaped from a cap, giving her an arch look. She

was fresh and smiling. Silver, gilding, and mother-of-pearl

shone on the table, and all about the room were rare plants

growing in magnificent china jars. As he saw Colonel

Chabert’s wife, rich with his spoil, in the lap of luxury and

the height of fashion, while he, poor wretch, was living with apoor dairyman among the beasts, the lawyer said to himself:

“The moral of all this is that a pretty woman will never

acknowledge as her husband, nor even as a lover, a man in an

old box-coat, a tow wig, and boots with holes in them.”

A mischievous and bitter smile expressed the feelings, half

philosophical and half satirical, which such a man was certain

to experience—a man well situated to know the truth of things

in spite of the lies behind which most families in Paris hide

their mode of life.

“Good-morning, Monsieur Derville,” said she, giving the

monkey some coffee to drink.

“Madame,” said he, a little sharply, for the light tone in

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which she spoke jarred on him. “I have come to speak with

you on a very serious matter.”

“I am so grieved , M. le Comte is away—”

“I, madame, am delighted. It would be grievous if he could

be present at our interview. Besides, I am informed through

M. Delbecq that you like to manage your own business with-out troubling the Count.”

“Then I will send for Delbecq,” said she.

“He would be of no use to you, clever as he is,” replied

Derville. “Listen to me, madame; one word will be enough to

make you grave. Colonel Chabert is alive!”

“Is it by telling me such nonsense as that that you think

you can make me grave?” said she with a shout of laughter.

But she was suddenly quelled by the singular penetration of

the fixed gaze which Derville turned on her, seeming to read

to the bottom of her soul.

“Madame,” he said with cold and piercing solemnity, “you

know not the extent of the danger that threatens you. I need

say nothing of the indisputable authenticity of the evidence

nor of the fulness of proof which testifies to the identity of

Comte Chabert. I am not, as you know, the man to take up a

bad cause. If you resist our proceedings to show that the cer-

tificate of death was false, you will lose that first case, and

that matter once settled, we shall gain every point.”

“What, then, do you wish to discuss with me?”

“Neither the Colonel nor yourself. Nor need I allude to

the briefs which clever advocates may draw up when armed

with the curious facts of this case, or the advantage they may

derive from the letters you received from your first husband

before your marriage to your second.”

“It is false,” she cried, with the violence of a spoilt woman.

“I never had a letter from Comte Chabert; and if some one ispretending to be the Colonel, it is some swindler, some re-

turned convict, like Coignard perhaps. It makes me shudder

only to think of it. Can the Colonel rise from the dead, mon-

sieur? Bonaparte sent an aide-de-camp to inquire for me on

his death, and to this day I draw the pension of three thou-

sand francs granted to this widow by the Government. I have

been perfectly in the right to turn away all the Chaberts who

have ever come, as I shall all who may come.”

“Happily we are alone, madame. We can tell lies at our

ease,” said he coolly, and finding it amusing to lash up the

Countess’ rage so as to lead her to betray herself, by tactics

familiar to lawyers, who are accustomed to keep cool when

their opponents or their clients are in a passion. “Well, then,

we must fight it out,” thought he, instantly hitting on a plan

to entrap her and show her her weakness.

“The proof that you received the first letter, madame, is

that it contained some securities—”

“Oh, as to securities—that it certainly did not.”

“Then you received the letter,” said Derville, smiling. “You

are caught, madame, in the first snare laid for you by an at-

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g


torney, and you fancy you could fight against Justice——”

The Countess colored, and then turned pale, hiding her

face in her hands. Then she shook off her shame, and retorted

with the natural impertinence of such women, “Since you are

the so-called Chabert’s attorney, be so good as to—”

“Madame,” said Derville, “I am at this moment as much your lawyer as I am Colonel Chabert’s. Do you suppose I

want to lose so valuable a client as you are?—But you are not

listening.”

“Nay, speak on, monsieur,” said she graciously.

“Your fortune came to you from M. le Comte Chabert,

and you cast him off. Your fortune is immense, and you leave

him to beg. An advocate can be very eloquent when a cause is

eloquent in itself; there are here circumstances which might

turn public opinion strongly against you.”

“But, monsieur,” said the Comtesse, provoked by the way

in which Dervil le turned and laid her on the gridiron, “even if

I grant that your M. Chabert is living, the law will uphold

my second marriage on account of the children, and I shall

get off with the restitution of two hundred and twenty-five

thousand francs to M. Chabert.”

“It is impossible to foresee what view the Bench may take

of the question. If on one side we have a mother and children,

on the other we have an old man crushed by sorrows, made

old by your refusals to know him. Where is he to find a wife?

Can the judges contravene the law? Your marriage with Colo-

nel Chabert has priority on its side and every legal right. But

if you appear under disgraceful colors, you might have an

unlooked-for adversary. That, madame, is the danger against

which I would warn you.”

“And who is he?”

“Comte Ferraud.”“Monsieur Ferraud has too great an affection for me, too

much respect for the mother of his children—”

“Do not talk of such absurd things,” interrupted Derville,

“to lawyers, who are accustomed to read hearts to the bottom.

At this instant Monsieur Ferraud has not the slightest wish

to annual your union, and I am quite sure that he adores you;

but if some one were to tell him that his marriage is void, that

his wife will be called before the bar of public opinion as a

criminal—”

“He would defend me, monsieur.”

“No, madame.”

“What reason could he have for deserting me, monsieur?”

“That he would be free to marry the only daughter of a

peer of France, whose title would be conferred on him by

patent from the King.”

The Countess turned pale.

“A hit!” said Derville to himself. “I have you on the hip;

the poor Colonel’s case is won.”—”Besides, madame,” he went

on aloud, “he would feel all the less remorse because a man

covered with glory—a General, Count, Grand Cross of the













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g


Legion of Honor—is not such a bad alternative; and if that

man insisted on his wife’s returning to him—”

“Enough, enough, monsieur!” she exclaimed. “I will never

have any lawyer but you. What is to be done?”

“Compromise!” said Derville.

“Does he still love me?” she said.“Well, I do not think he can do otherwise.”

The Countess raised her head at these words. A flash of

hope shone in her eyes; she thought perhaps that she could

speculate on her first husband’s affection to gain her cause by

some feminine cunning.

“I shall await your orders, madame, to know whether I am

to report our proceedings to you, or if you will come to my

office to agree to the terms of a compromise,” said Derville,

taking leave.

A week after Derville had paid these two visits, on a fine

morning in June, the husband and wife, who had been sepa-

rated by an almost supernatural chance, started from the op-

posite ends of Paris to meet in the office of the lawyer who

was engaged by both. The supplies liberally advanced by

Derville to Colonel Chabert had enabled him to dress as suited

his position in life, and the dead man arrived in a very decent

cab. He wore a wig suited to his face, was dressed in blue

cloth with white linen, and wore under his waistcoat the broad

red ribbon of the higher grade of the Legion of Honor. In

resuming the habits of wealth he had recovered his soldierly

style. He held himself up; his face, grave and mysterious-

looking, reflected his happiness and all his hopes, and seemed

to have acquired youth and impasto, to borrow a picturesque

word from the painter’s art. He was no more like the Chabert

of the old box-coat than a cartwheel double sou is like a newly coined forty-franc piece. The passer-by, only to see him, would

have recognized at once one of the noble wrecks of our old

army, one of the heroic men on whom our national glory is

reflected, as a splinter of ice on which the sun shines seems to

reflect every beam. These veterans are at once a picture and a

book.

When the Count jumped out of his carriage to go into

Derville’s office, he did it as lightly as a young man. Hardly

had his cab moved off, when a smart brougham drove up,

splendid with coats-of-arms. Madame la Comtesse Ferraud

stepped out in a dress which, though simple, was cleverly de-

signed to show how youthful her figure was. She wore a pretty

drawn bonnet lined with pink, which framed her face to per-

fection, softening its outlines and making it look younger.

If the clients were rejuvenescent, the office was unaltered,

and presented the same picture as that described at the be-

ginning of this story. Simonnin was eating his breakfast, his

shoulder leaning against the window, which was then open,

and he was staring up at the blue sky in the opening of the

courtyard enclosed by four gloomy houses.













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“Ah, ha!” cried the little c lerk, “who will bet an evening at

the play that Colonel Chabert is a General, and wears a red

ribbon?”

“The chief is a great magician,” said Godeschal.

“Then there is no trick to play on him this time?” asked

Desroches.“His wife has taken that in hand, the Comtesse Ferraud,”

said Boucard.

“What next?” said Godeschal. “Is Comtesse Ferraud re-

quired to belong to two men?”

“Here she is,” answered Simonnin.

“So you are not deaf, you young rogue!” said Chabert, tak-

ing the gutter-jumper by the ear and twisting it, to the de-

light of the other clerks, who began to laugh, looking at the

Colonel with the curious attention due to so singular a per-

sonage.

Comte Chabert was in Derville’s private room at the mo-

ment when his wife came in by the door of the office.

“I say, Boucard, there is going to be a queer scene in the

chief ’s room! There is a woman who can spend her days alter-

nately, the odd with Comte Ferraud, and the even with Comte

Chabert.”

“And in leap year,” said Godeschal, “they must settle the

count between them.”

“Silence, gentlemen, you can be heard!” said Boucard se-

verely. “I never was in an office where there was so much jest-

ing as there is here over the clients.”

Derville had made the Colonel retire to the bedroom when

the Countess was admitted.

“Madame,” he said, “not knowing whether it would be

agreeable to you to meet M. le Comte Chabert, I have placed

you apart. If, however, you should wish it—”“It is an attention for which I am obliged to you.”

“I have drawn up the memorandum of an agreement of

which you and M. Chabert can discuss the conditions, here,

and now. I will go alternately to him and to you, and explain

your views respectively.”

“Let me see, monsieur,” said the Countess impatiently.

Derville read aloud:

“ ‘Between the undersigned:

“ ‘M. Hyacinthe Chabert, Count, Marechal de Camp, and

Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, living in Paris, Rue

du Petit-Banquier, on the one part;

“ ‘And Madame Rose Chapotel, wife of the aforesaid M. le

Comte Chabert, nee —’ “

“Pass over the preliminaries,” said she. “Come to the con-

ditions.”

“Madame,” said the lawyer, “the preamble briefly sets forth

the position in which you stand to each other. Then, by the

first clause, you acknowledge, in the presence of three wit-

nesses, of whom two shall be notaries, and one the dairyman

with whom your husband has been lodging, to all of whom












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your secret is known, and who will be absolutely silent—you

acknowledge, I say, that the individual designated in the docu-

ments subjoined to the deed, and whose identity is to be fur-

ther proved by an act of recognition prepared by your notary,

Alexandre Crottat, is your first husband, Comte Chabert. By

the second clause Comte Chabert, to secure your happiness, will undertake to assert his rights only under certain circum-

stances set forth in the deed.—And these,” said Derville, in a

parenthesis, “are none other than a failure to carry out the

conditions of this secret agreement.—M. Chabert, on his part,

agrees to accept judgment on a friendly suit, by which his

certificate of death shall be annulled, and his marriage dis-

solved.”

“That will not suit me in the least,” said the Countess

with surprise. “I will be a party to no suit; you know why.”

“By the third clause,” Derville went on, with imperturb-

able coolness, “you pledge yourself to secure to Hyacinthe

Comte Chabert an income of twenty-four thousand francs

on government stock held in his name, to revert to you at his

death—”

“But it is much too dear!” exclaimed the Countess.

“Can you compromise the matter cheaper?”

“Possibly.”

“But what do you want, madame?”

“I want—I will not have a lawsuit. I want—”

“You want him to remain dead?” said Derville, interrupt-

ing her hastily.

“Monsieur,” said the Countess, “if twenty-four thousand

francs a year are necessary, we will go to law—”

“Yes, we will go to law,” said the Colonel in a deep voice, as

he opened the door and stood before his wife, with one hand

in his waistcoat and the other hanging by his side—an atti-tude to which the recollection of his adventure gave horrible

significance.

“It is he,” said the Countess to herself.

“Too dear!” the old soldier exclaimed. “I have given you

near on a million, and you are cheapening my misfortunes.

Very well; now I will have you—you and your fortune. Our

goods are in common, our marriage is not dissolved—”

“But monsieur is not Colonel Chabert!” cried the Count-

ess, in feigned amazement.

“Indeed!” said the old man, in a tone of intense irony. “Do

you want proofs? I found you in the Palais Royal——”

The Countess turned pale. Seeing her grow white under

her rouge, the old soldier paused, touched by the acute suf-

fering he was inflicting on the woman he had once so ar-

dently loved; but she shot such a venomous glance at him

that he abruptly went on:

“You were with La—”

“Allow me, Monsieur Derville,” said the Countess to the

lawyer. “You must give me leave to retire. I did not come here

to listen to such dreadful things.”












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She rose and went out. Derville rushed after her; but the

Countess had taken wings, and seemed to have flown from

the place.

On returning to his private room, he found the Colonel in

a towering rage, striding up and down.

“In those times a man took his wife where he chose,” saidhe. “But I was foolish and chose badly; I trusted to appear-

ances. She has no heart.”

“Well, Colonel, was I not right to beg you not to come?—

I am now positive of your identity; when you came in, the

Countess gave a little start, of which the meaning was un-

equivocal. But you have lost your chances. Your wife knows

that you are unrecognizable.”

“I will kill her!”

“Madness! you will be caught and executed like any com-

mon wretch. Besides you might miss! That would be unpar-

donable. A man must not miss his shot when he wants to kill

his wife.—Let me set things straight; you are only a big child.

Go now. Take care of yourself; she is capable of setting some

trap for you and shutting you up in Charenton. I will notify

her of our proceedings to protect you against a surprise.”

The unhappy Colonel obeyed his young benefactor, and

went away, stammering apologies. He slowly went down the

dark staircase, lost in gloomy thoughts, and crushed perhaps

by the blow just dealt him—the most cruel he could feel, the

thrust that could most deeply pierce his heart—when he heard

the rustle of a woman’s dress on the lowest landing, and his

wife stood before him.

“Come, monsieur,” said she, taking his arm with a gesture

like those familiar to him of old. Her action and the accent of

her voice, which had recovered its graciousness, were enough

to allay the Colonel’s wrath, and he allowed himself to be ledto the carriage.

“Well, get in!” said she, when the footman had let down

the step.

And as if by magic, he found himself sitting by his wife in

the brougham.

“Where to?” asked the servant.

“To Groslay,” said she.

The horses started at once, and carried them all across Paris.

“Monsieur,” said the Countess, in a tone of voice which

betrayed one of those emotions which are rare in our lives,

and which agitate every part of our being. At such moments

the heart, fibres, nerves, countenance, soul, and body, every-

thing, every pore even, feels a thrill. Life no longer seems to

be within us; it flows out, springs forth, is communicated as

if by contagion, transmitted by a look, a tone of voice, a ges-

ture, impressing our will on others. The old soldier started on

hearing this single word, this first, terrible “monsieur!” But

still it was at once a reproach and a pardon, a hope and a

despair, a question and an answer. This word included them

all; none but an actress could have thrown so much eloquence,

Honore de Balzac. Colonel Chabert. Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at












C o n t e n t s


so many feelings into a single word. Truth is less complete in

its utterance; it does not put everything on the outside; it

allows us to see what is within. The Colonel was filled with

remorse for his suspicions, his demands, and his anger; he

looked down not to betray his agitation.

“Monsieur,” repeated she, after an imperceptible pause, “Iknew you at once.”

“Rosine,” said the old soldier, “those words contain the only

balm that can help me to forget my misfortunes.”

Two large tears rolled hot on to his wife’s hands, which he

pressed to show his paternal affection.

“Monsieur,” she went on, “could you not have guessed what

it cost me to appear before a stranger in a position so false as

mine now is? If I have to blush for it, at least let it be in the

privacy of my family. Ought not such a secret to remain bur-

ied in our hearts? You will forgive me, I hope, for my appar-

ent indifference to the woes of a Chabert in whose existence I

could not possibly believe. I received your letters,” she hastily

added, seeing in his face the objection it expressed, “but they

did not reach me till thirteen months after the battle of Eylau.

They were opened, dirty, the writing was unrecognizable; and

after obtaining Napoleon’s signature to my second marriage

contract, I could not help believing that some clever swindler

wanted to make a fool of me. Therefore, to avoid disturbing

Monsieur Ferraud’s peace of mind, and disturbing family ties,

I was obliged to take precautions against a pretended Chabert.

Was I not right, I ask you?”

“Yes, you were right. It was I who was the idiot, the owl,

the dolt, not to have calculated better what the consequences

of such a position might be.—But where are we going?” he

asked, seeing that they had reached the barrier of La Chapelle.

“To my country house near Groslay, in the valley of Mont-morency. There, monsieur, we will consider the steps to be

taken. I know my duties. Though I am yours by right, I am

no longer yours in fact. Can you wish that we should become

the talk of Paris? We need not inform the public of a situa-

tion, which for me has its ridiculous side, and let us preserve

our dignity. You still love me,” she said, with a sad, sweet gaze

at the Colonel, “but have not I been authorized to form other

ties? In so strange a position, a secret voice bids me trust to

your kindness, which is so well known to me. Can I be wrong

in taking you as the sole arbiter of my fate? Be at once judge

and party to the suit. I trust in your noble character; you will

be generous enough to forgive me for the consequences of

faults committed in innocence. I may then confess to you: I

love M. Ferraud. I believed that I had a right to love him. I do

not blush to make this confession to you; even if it offends

you, it does not disgrace us. I cannot conceal the facts. When

fate made me a widow, I was not a mother.”

The Colonel with a wave of his hand bid his wife be si-

lent, and for a mile and a half they sat without speaking a

single word. Chabert could fancy he saw the two little ones

Honore de Balzac . Colonel Chabert. Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at










h

C o n t e n t s


before him.

“Rosine.”

“Monsieur?”

“The dead are very wrong to come to life again.”

“Oh, monsieur, no, no! Do not think me ungrateful. Only,

you find me a lover, a mother, while you left me merely a wife. Though it is no longer in my power to love, I know how

much I owe you, and I can still offer you all the affection of a

daughter.”

“Rosine,” said the old man in a softened tone, “I no longer

feel any resentment against you. We will forget anything,” he

added, with one of those smiles which always reflect a noble

soul; “I have not so little delicacy as to demand the mockery

of love from a wife who no longer loves me.”

The Countess gave him a flashing look full of such deep

gratitude that poor Chabert would have been glad to sink

again into his grave at Eylau. Some men have a soul strong

enough for such self-devotion, of which the whole reward

consists in the assurance that they have made the person they

love happy.

“My dear friend, we will talk all this over later when our

hearts have rested,” said the Countess.

The conversation turned to other subjects, for it was im-

possible to dwell very long on this one. Though the couple

came back again and again to their singular position, either

by some allusion or of serious purpose, they had a delightful

drive, recalling the events of their former life together and the

times of the Empire. The Countess knew how to lend pecu-

liar charm to her reminiscences, and gave the conversation the

tinge of melancholy that was needed to keep it serious. She

revived his love without awakening his desires, and allowed

her first husband to discern the mental wealth she had ac-quired while trying to accustom him to moderate his plea-

sure to that which a father may feel in the society of a favorite

daughter.

The Colonel had known the Countess of the Empire; he

found her a Countess of the Restoration.

At last, by a cross-road, they arrived at the entrance to a

large park lying in the little valley which divides the heights

of Margency from the pretty village of Groslay. The Count-

ess had there a delightful house, where the Colonel on arriv-

ing found everything in readiness for his stay there, as well as

for his wife’s. Misfortune is a kind of talisman whose virtue

consists in its power to confirm our original nature; in some

men it increases their distrust and malignancy, just as it im-

proves the goodness of those who have a kind heart.

Sorrow had made the Colonel even more helpful and good

than he had always been, and he could understand some se-

crets of womanly distress which are unrevealed to most men.

Nevertheless, in spite of his loyal trustfulness, he could not

help saying to his wife:

“Then you felt quite sure you would bring me here?”


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“Yes,” replied she, “if I found Colonel Chabert in Derville’s

client.”

The appearance of truth she contrived to give to this an-

swer dissipated the slight suspicions which the Colonel was

ashamed to have felt. For three days the Countess was quite

charming to her first husband. By tender attentions and un-failing sweetness she seemed anxious to wipe out the memory

of the sufferings he had endured, and to earn forgiveness for

the woes which, as she confessed, she had innocently caused

him. She delighted in displaying for him the charms she knew

he took pleasure in, while at the same time she assumed a

kind of melancholy; for men are more especially accessible to

certain ways, certain graces of the heart or of the mind which

they cannot resist. She aimed at interesting him in her posi-

tion, and appealing to his feelings so far as to take possession

of his mind and control him despotically.

Ready for anything to attain her ends, she did not yet

know what she was to do with this man; but at any rate she

meant to annihilate him socially. On the evening of the third

day she felt that in spite of her efforts she could not conceal

her uneasiness as to the results of her manoeuvres. To give

herself a minute’s reprieve she went up to her room, sat down

before her writing-table, and laid aside the mask of compo-

sure which she wore in Chabert’s presence, like an actress who,

returning to her dressing-room after a fatiguing fifth act, drops

half dead, leaving with the audience an image of herself which

she no longer resembles. She proceeded to finish a letter she

had begun to Delbecq, whom she desired to go in her name

and demand of Derville the deeds relating to Colonel Chabert,

to copy them, and to come to her at once to Groslay. She had

hardly finished when she heard the Colonel’s step in the pas-

sage; uneasy at her absence, he had come to look for her.“Alas!” she exclaimed, “I wish I were dead! My position is

intolerable . . .”

“Why, what is the matter?” asked the good man.

“Nothing, nothing!” she replied.

She rose, left the Colonel, and went down to speak pri-

vately to her maid, whom she sent off to Paris, impressing on

her that she was herself to deliver to Delbecq the letter just

written, and to bring it back to the writer as soon as he had

read it. Then the Countess went out to sit on a bench suffi-

ciently in sight for the Colonel to join her as soon as he might

choose. The Colonel, who was looking for her, hastened up

and sat down by her.

“Rosine,” said he, “what is the matter with you?”

She did not answer.

It was one of those glorious, calm evenings in the month

of June, whose secret harmonies infuse such sweetness into

the sunset. The air was clear, the stillness perfect, so that far

away in the park they could hear the voices of some children,

which added a kind of melody to the sublimity of the scene.

“You do not answer me?” the Colonel said to his wife.


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“My husband——” said the Countess, who broke off,

started a little, and with a blush stopped to ask him, “What

am I to say when I speak of M. Ferraud?”

“Call him your husband, my poor child,” replied the Colo-

nel, in a kind voice. “Is he not the father of your children?”

“Well, then,” she said, “if he should ask what I came herefor, if he finds out that I came here, alone, with a stranger,

what am I to say to him? Listen, monsieur,” she went on,

assuming a dignified attitude, “decide my fate, I am resigned

to anything—”

“My dear,” said the Colonel, taking possession of his wife’s

hands, “I have made up my mind to sacrifice myself entirely

for your happiness—”

“That is impossible!” she exclaimed, with a sudden spas-

modic movement. “Remember that you would have to re-

nounce your identity, and in an authenticated form.”

“What?” said the Colonel. “Is not my word enough for

you?”

The word “authenticated” fell on the old man’s heart, and

roused involuntary distrust. He looked at his wife in a way

that made her color, she cast down her eyes, and he feared

that he might find himself compelled to despise her. The

Countess was afraid lest she had scared the shy modesty, the

stern honesty, of a man whose generous temper and primitive

virtues were known to her. Though these feelings had brought

the clouds to her brow, they immediately recovered their har-

mony. This was the way of it. A child’s cry was heard in the

distance.

“Jules, leave your sister in peace,” the Countess called out.

“What, are your children here?” said Chabert.

“Yes, but I told them not to trouble you.”

The old soldier understood the delicacy, the womanly tactof so gracious a precaution, and took the Countess’ hand to

kiss it.

“But let them come,” said he.

The little girl ran up to complain of her brother.

“Mamma!”

“Mamma!”

“It was Jules—”

“It was her—”

Their little hands were held out to their mother, and the

two childish voices mingled; it was an unexpected and charming

picture.

“Poor little things!” cried the Countess, no longer restrain-

ing her tears, “I shall have to leave them. To whom will the

law assign them? A mother’s heart cannot be divided; I want

them, I want them.”

“Are you making mamma cry?” said Jules, looking fiercely

at the Colonel.

“Silence, Jules!” said the mother in a decided tone.

The two children stood speechless, examining their mother

and the stranger with a curiosity which it is impossible to


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express in words.

“Oh yes!” she cried. “If I am separated from the Count,

only leave me my children, and I will submit to anything . . .”

This was the decisive speech which gained all that she had

hoped from it.

“Yes,” exclaimed the Colonel, as if he were ending a sen-tence already begun in his mind, “I must return underground

again. I had told myself so already.”

“Can I accept such a sacrifice?” replied his wife. “If some

men have died to save a mistress’ honor, they gave their life

but once. But in this case you would be giving your life every

day. No, no. It is impossible. If it were only your life, it would

be nothing; but to sign a declaration that you are not Colonel

Chabert, to acknowledge yourself an imposter, to sacrifice your

honor, and live a lie every hour of the day! Human devotion

cannot go so far. Only think!—No. But for my poor children

I would have fled with you by this time to the other end of

the world.”

“But,” said Chabert, “cannot I live here in your little lodge

as one of your relations? I am as worn out as a cracked can-

non; I want nothing but a little tobacco and the

Constitutionnel .”

The Countess melted into tears. There was a contest of

generosity between the Comtesse Ferraud and Colonel

Chabert, and the soldier came out victorious. One evening,

seeing this mother with her children, the soldier was bewitched

by the touching grace of a family picture in the country, in

the shade and the silence; he made a resolution to remain

dead, and, frightened no longer at the authentication of a

deed, he asked what he could do to secure beyond all risk the

happiness of this family.

“Do exactly as you like,” said the Countess. “I declare to you that I will have nothing to do with this affair. I ought

not.”

Delbecq had arrived some days before, and in obedience

to the Countess’ verbal instructions, the intendant had suc-

ceeded in gaining the old soldier’s confidence. So on the fol-

lowing morning Colonel Chabert went with the erewhile at-

torney to Saint-Leu-Taverny, where Delbecq had caused the

notary to draw up an affidavit in such terms that, after hear-

ing it read, the Colonel started up and walked out of the

office.

“Turf and thunder! What a fool you must think me! Why,

I should make myself out a swindler!” he exclaimed.

“Indeed, monsieur,” said Delbecq, “I should advise you not

to sign in haste. In your place I would get at least thirty thou-

sand francs a year out of the bargain. Madame would pay

them.”

After annihilating this scoundrel emeritus by the light-

ning look of an honest man insulted, the Colonel rushed off,

carried away by a thousand contrary emotions. He was suspi-

cious, indignant, and calm again by turns.


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Finally he made his way back into the park of Groslay by

a gap in a fence, and slowly walked on to sit down and rest,

and meditate at his ease, in a little room under a gazebo, from

which the road to Saint- Leu could be seen. The path being

strewn with the yellowish sand which is used instead of river-

gravel, the Countess, who was sitting in the upper room of this little summer-house, did not hear the Colonel’s approach,

for she was too much preoccupied with the success of her

business to pay the smallest attention to the slight noise made

by her husband. Nor did the old man notice that his wife was

in the room over him.

“Well, Monsieur Delbecq, has he signed?” the Countess

asked her secretary, whom she saw alone on the road beyond

the hedge of a haha.

“No, madame. I do not even know what has become of our

man. The old horse reared.”

“Then we shall be obliged to put him into Charenton,”

said she, “since we have got him.”

The Colonel, who recovered the elasticity of youth to leap

the haha, in the twinkling of an eye was standing in front of

Delbecq, on whom he bestowed the two finest slaps that ever

a scoundrel’s cheeks received.

“And you may add that old horses can kick!” said he.

His rage spent, the Colonel no longer felt vigorous enough

to leap the ditch. He had seen the truth in all its nakedness.

The Countess’ speech and Delbecq’s reply had revealed the

conspiracy of which he was to be the victim. The care taken of

him was but a bait to entrap him in a snare. That speech was

like a drop of subtle poison, bringing on in the old soldier a

return of all his sufferings, physical and moral. He came back

to the summer-house through the park gate, walking slowly

like a broken man. Then for him there was to be neither peace nor truce. From

this moment he must begin the odious warfare with this

woman of which Derville had spoken, enter on a life of litiga-

tion, feed on gall, drink every morning of the cup of bitter-

ness. And then—fearful thought!—where was he to find the

money needful to pay the cost of the first proceedings? He

felt such disgust of life, that if there had been any water at

hand he would have thrown himself into it; that if he had

had a pistol, he would have blown out his brains. Then he

relapsed into the indecision of mind which, since his conver-

sation with Derville at the dairyman’s had changed his char-

acter.

At last, having reached the kiosque, he went up to the

gazebo, where little rose-windows afforded a view over each

lovely landscape of the valley, and where he found his wife

seated on a chair. The Countess was gazing at the distance,

and preserved a calm countenance, showing that impenetrable

face which women can assume when resolved to do their worst.

She wiped her eyes as if she had been weeping, and played

absently with the pink ribbons of her sash. Nevertheless, in













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spite of her apparent assurance, she could not help shudder-

ing slightly when she saw before her her venerable benefactor,

standing with folded arms, his face pale, his brow stern.

“Madame,” he said, after gazing at her fixedly for a mo-

ment and compelling her to blush, “Madame, I do not curse

you—I scorn you. I can now thank the chance that has divided us. I do not feel even a desire for revenge; I no longer

love you. I want nothing from you. Live in peace on the

strength of my word; it is worth more than the scrawl of all

the notaries in Paris. I will never assert my claim to the name

I perhaps have made illustrious. I am henceforth but a poor

devil named Hyacinthe, who asks no more than his share of

the sunshine.—Farewell!”

The Countess threw herself at his feet; she would have

detained him by taking his hands, but he pushed her away

with disgust, saying:

“Do not touch me!”

The Countess’ expression when she heard her husband’s

retreating steps is quite indescribable. Then, with the deep

perspicacity given only by utter villainy, or by fierce worldly

selfishness, she knew that she might live in peace on the word

and the contempt of this loyal veteran.

Chabert, in fact, disappeared. The dairyman failed in busi-

ness, and became a hackney-cab driver. The Colonel, perhaps,

took up some similar industry for a time. Perhaps, like a stone

flung into a chasm, he went falling from ledge to ledge, to be

lost in the mire of rags that seethes through the streets of

Paris.

Six months after this event, Derville, hearing no more of

Colonel Chabert or the Comtesse Ferraud, supposed that they

had no doubt come to a compromise, which the Countess,

out of revenge, had had arranged by some other lawyer. Soone morning he added up the sums he had advanced to the

said Chabert with the costs, and begged the Comtesse Ferraud

to claim from M. le Comte Chabert the amount of the bill,

assuming that she would know where to find her first hus-

band.

The very next day Comte Ferraud’s man of business, lately

appointed President of the County Court in a town of some

importance, wrote this distressing note to Derville:

“MONSIEUR,—

“Madame la Comtesse Ferraud desires me to inform you

that your client took complete advantage of your confidence,

and that the individual calling himself Comte Chabert has

acknowledged that he came forward under false pretences.

“Yours, etc., DELBECQ.”

“One comes across people who are, on my honor, too stu-

pid by half,” cried Derville. “They don’t deserve to be Chris-

tians! Be humane, generous, philanthropical, and a lawyer,

and you are bound to be cheated! There is a piece of business

that will cost me two thousand- franc notes!”













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Some time after receiving this letter, Derville went to the

Palais de Justice in search of a pleader to whom he wished to

speak, and who was employed in the Police Court. As chance

would have it, Derville went into Court Number 6 at the

moment when the Presiding Magistrate was sentencing one

Hyacinthe to two months’ imprisonment as a vagabond, andsubsequently to be taken to the Mendicity House of Deten-

tion, a sentence which, by magistrates’ law, is equivalent to

perpetual imprisonment. On hearing the name of Hyacinthe,

Derville looked at the deliquent, sitting between two gen-

darmes on the bench for the accused, and recognized in the

condemned man his false Colonel Chabert.

The old soldier was placid, motionless, almost absent-

minded. In spite of his rags, in spite of the misery stamped

on his countenance, it gave evidence of noble pride. His eye

had a stoical expression which no magistrate ought to have

misunderstood; but as soon as a man has fallen into the hands

of justice, he is no more than a moral entity, a matter of law or

of fact, just as to statists he has become a zero.

When the veteran was taken back to the lock-up, to be

removed later with the batch of vagabonds at that moment at

the bar, Derville availed himself of the privilege accorded to

lawyers of going wherever they please in the Courts, and fol-

lowed him to the lock-up, where he stood scrutinizing him

for some minutes, as well as the curious crew of beggars among

whom he found himself. The passage to the lock-up at that

moment afforded one of those spectacles which, unfortunately,

neither legislators, nor philanthropists, nor painters, nor writ-

ers come to study. Like all the laboratories of the law, this

ante-room is a dark and malodorous place; along the walls

runs a wooden seat, blackened by the constant presence there

of the wretches who come to this meeting-place of every formof social squalor, where not one of them is missing.

A poet might say that the day was ashamed to light up

this dreadful sewer through which so much misery flows! There

is not a spot on that plank where some crime has not sat, in

embryo or matured; not a corner where a man has never stood

who, driven to despair by the blight which justice has set

upon him after his first fault, has not there begun a career, at

the end of which looms the guillotine or the pistol-snap of

the suicide. All who fall on the pavement of Paris rebound

against these yellow-gray walls, on which a philanthropist who

was not a speculator might read a justification of the numer-

ous suicides complained of by hypocritical writers who are

incapable of taking a step to prevent them—for that justifi-

cation is written in that ante- room, like a preface to the dra-

mas of the Morgue, or to those enacted on the Place de la

Greve.

At this moment Colonel Chabert was sitting among these

men—men with coarse faces, clothed in the horrible livery of

misery, and silent at intervals, or talking in a low tone, for

three gendarmes on duty paced to and fro, their sabres clat-













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tering on the floor.

“Do you recognize me?” said Derville to the old man,

standing in front of him.

“Yes, sir,” said Chabert, rising.

“If you are an honest man,” Derville went on in an under-

tone, “how could you remain in my debt?” The old soldier blushed as a young girl might when ac-

cused by her mother of a clandestine love affair.

“What! Madame Ferraud has not paid you?” cried he in a

loud voice.

“Paid me?” said Derville. “She wrote to me that you were a

swindler.”

The Colonel cast up his eyes in a sublime impulse of hor-

ror and imprecation, as if to call heaven to witness to this

fresh subterfuge.

“Monsieur,” said he, in a voice that was calm by sheer hus-

kiness, “get the gendarmes to allow me to go into the lock-up,

and I will sign an order which will certainly be honored.”

At a word from Derville to the sergeant he was allowed to

take his client into the room, where Hyacinthe wrote a few

lines, and addressed them to the Comtesse Ferraud.

“Send her that,” said the soldier, “and you will be paid

your costs and the money you advanced. Believe me, mon-

sieur, if I have not shown you the gratitude I owe you for

your kind offices, it is not the less there,” and he laid his hand

on his heart. “Yes, it is there, deep and sincere. But what can

the unfortunate do? They live, and that is all.”

“What!” said Derville. “Did you not stipulate for an al-

lowance?”

“Do not speak of it!” cried the old man. “You cannot con-

ceive how deep my contempt is for the outside life to which

most men cling. I was suddenly attacked by a sickness—dis-gust of humanity. When I think that Napoleon is at Saint-

Helena, everything on earth is a matter of indifference to me.

I can no longer be a soldier; that is my only real grief. After

all,” he added with a gesture of childish simplicity, “it is bet-

ter to enjoy luxury of feeling than of dress. For my part, I fear

nobody’s contempt.”

And the Colonel sat down on his bench again.

Derville went away. On returning to his office, he sent

Godeschal, at that time his second clerk, to the Comtesse

Ferraud, who, on reading the note, at once paid the sum due

to Comte Chabert’s lawyer.

In 1840, towards the end of June, Godeschal, now him-

self an attorney, went to Ris with Derville, to whom he had

succeeded. When they reached the avenue leading from the

highroad to Bicetre, they saw, under one of the elm-trees by

the wayside, one of those old, broken, and hoary paupers who

have earned the Marshal’s staff among beggars by living on at

Bicetre as poor women live on at la Salpetriere. This man, one

of the two thousand poor creatures who are lodged in the













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infirmary for the aged, was seated on a corner-stone, and

seemed to have concentrated all his intelligence on an opera-

tion well known to these pensioners, which consists in drying

their snuffy pocket-handkerchiefs in the sun, perhaps to save

washing them. This old man had an attractive countenance.

He was dressed in a reddish cloth wrapper-coat which the work-house affords to its inmates, a sort of horrible livery.

“I say, Derville,” said Godeschal to his traveling compan-

ion, “look at that old fellow. Isn’t he like those grotesque carved

figures we get from Germany? And it is alive, perhaps it is

happy.”

Derville looked at the poor man through his eyeglass, and

with a little exclamation of surprise he said:

“That old man, my dear fellow, is a whole poem, or, as the

romantics say, a drama.—Did you ever meet the Comtesse

Ferraud?”

“Yes; she is a clever woman, and agreeable; but rather too

pious,” said Godeschal.

“That old Bicetre pauper is her lawful husband, Comte

Chabert, the old Colonel. She has had him sent here, no doubt.

And if he is in this workhouse instead of living in a mansion,

it is solely because he reminded the pretty Countess that he

had taken her, like a hackney cab, on the street. I can remem-

ber now the tiger’s glare she shot at him at that moment.”

This opening having excited Godeschal’s curiosity, Derville

related the story here told.

Two days later, on Monday morning, as they returned to

Paris, the two friends looked again at Bicetre, and Derville

proposed that they should call on Colonel Chabert. Halfway

up the avenue they found the old man sitting on the trunk of

a felled tree. With his stick in one hand, he was amusing

himself with drawing lines in the sand. On looking at himnarrowly, they perceived that he had been breakfasting else-

where than at Bicetre.

“Good-morning, Colonel Chabert,” said Derville.

“Not Chabert! not Chabert! My name is Hyacinthe,” re-

plied the veteran. “I am no longer a man, I am No. 164, Room

7,” he added, looking at Derville with timid anxiety, the fear

of an old man and a child.—”Are you going to visit the man

condemned to death?” he asked after a moment’s silence. “He

is not married! He is very lucky!”

“Poor fellow!” said Godeschal. “Would you like something

to buy snuff?”

With all the simplicity of a street Arab, the Colonel ea-

gerly held out his hand to the two strangers, who each gave

him a twenty-franc piece; he thanked them with a puzzled

look, saying:

“Brave troopers!”

He ported arms, pretended to take aim at them, and

shouted with a smile:

“Fire! both arms! Vive Napoleon!” And he drew a flourish

in the air with his stick.













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“The nature of his wound has no doubt made him child-

ish,” said Derville.

“Childish! he?” said another old pauper, who was looking

on. “Why, there are days when you had better not tread on

his corns. He is an old rogue, full of philosophy and imagina-

tion. But to-day, what can you expect! He has had his Mon-

day treat.—He was here, monsieur, so long ago as 1820. At

that time a Prussian officer, whose chaise was crawling up the

hill of Villejuif, came by on foot. We two were together,

Hyacinthe and I, by the roadside. The officer, as he walked,

was talking to another, a Russian, or some animal of the same

species, and when the Prussian saw the old boy, just to make

fun, he said to him, ‘Here is an old cavalry man who must

have been at Rossbach.’—’I was too young to be there,’ said

Hyacinthe. ‘But I was at Jena.’ And the Prussian made off

pretty quick, without asking any more questions.”

“What a destiny!” exclaimed Derville. “Taken out of the

Foundling Hospital to die in the Infirmary for the Aged,

after helping Napoleon between whiles to conquer Egypt and

Europe.—Do you know, my dear fellow,” Derville went on

after a pause, “there are in modern society three men who can

never think well of the world—the priest, the doctor, and the

man of law? And they wear black robes, perhaps because they

are in mourning for every virtue and every illusion. The most

hapless of the three is the lawyer. When a man comes in search

of the priest, he is prompted by repentance, by remorse, by

beliefs which make him interesting, which elevate him and

comfort the soul of the intercessor whose task will bring him

a sort of gladness; he purifies, repairs and reconciles. But we

lawyers, we see the same evil feelings repeated again and again,

nothing can correct them; our offices are sewers which can

never be cleansed.

“How many things have I learned in the exercise of my

profession! I have seen a father die in a garret, deserted by two

daughters, to whom he had given forty thousand francs a year!

I have known wills burned; I have seen mothers robbing their

children, wives killing their husbands, and working on the

love they could inspire to make the men idiotic or mad, that

they might live in peace with a lover. I have seen women teach-

ing the child of their marriage such tastes as must bring it to

the grave in order to benefit the child of an illicit affection. I

could not tell you all I have seen, for I have seen crimes against

which justice is impotent. In short, all the horrors that ro-

mancers suppose they have invented are still below the truth.

You will know something of these pretty things; as for me, I

am going to live in the country with my wife. I have a horror

of Paris.”

“I have seen plenty of them already in Desroches’ office,”

replied Godeschal.

PARIS, February-March 1832.













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